


Changing Pressure

by Pineapplepie



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Aged-Up Hiro, Angst, Drama, Experienced Hiro, Frottage, Hamadacest - Freeform, I suck at tags guys sorry, Incest, Jealousy, Lots of drama, M/M, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Hiro, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Smut, Tadashi is Bad at Feelings, because...conflict...and stuff..., drunk!Tadashi, hidashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:27:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3393479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pineapplepie/pseuds/Pineapplepie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David is bluntly shoved aside. Hiro scrambles to grab him, but the other boy tumbles off of the bed with a squawk, a sound so loud it hurls him straight out of his trance like a sling shot. He's back, brain completely rebooted - online. And for the first time that might actually be a very bad thing.<br/>"What the hell."<br/>Tadashi is towering over the foreign boy, nostrils flaring, fists clenched tight like vice grips. He's angry. He's really, really angry.<br/>"My little brother, David? Are you - shitting me!"<br/>Great. Spectacular. Just fantastic.<br/>Hiro's so screwed.</p><p>-</p><p>Hiro has a "special" friend, Tadashi gets jealous, and the Hamada household is in for some serious drama because these boys are bad at dealing with feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hamada House Rule Number 3

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have some more Hidashi. I'm aware that I have just received my train ticket to the underworld. But until then - if anybody needs anything - I'll be in my trash can. Y'all can come over if you like. I have a cat in here, so just a heads up. His name is Andy. He's a bit of a dumb-dumb, but he's really sweet. He loves everybody and everything, so no worries. He's meh munchkin.
> 
> So...Hiro's 17 and Tadashi is 19 or 20 (you may choose) I don't know, I just want big ol' sweet Tadashi to not know how to deal with his feelings for Hiro. So he's all bitchy, and Hiro sort of likes it because he's a kinky little shit, and then Tadashi gets jealous, and - asdfghj... 
> 
> Anywho, this is unbetad, but I hope you like it :)

 The bathroom door is slightly angled, a slice of cold light cutting through the darkened hallway like a permanent lightning bolt. There's plane of pale skin, patterns contrasting against the Kaiju Krogar shower curtain. The flash of color makes Hiro stop in his tracks, feet barely dodging Mochi who is lazily plopped against the floor boards like a furry potato.

He doesn't know why he peers into the bathroom. He doesn't know why he nudges his head the slightest bit more to the left. He doesn't know why he keeps on staring until his eyes start to tingle and burn.

He just does.  

Tadashi has his hands firmly gripped around the rim of the porcelain sink, attention strained against his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. There's something vacant in the pair of eyes that always look far too involved to seem so absent minded. They look empty, as if someone had scooped his eyeballs right out of their sockets, leaving nothing but hollow bruises. 

There's a towel wrapped around his hips, a sliver of dark hair peeking out from beneath the low-riding material. His thick muscles are coiled tight around his bones, dips protruding out of his skin, as if they're two seconds away from snapping. Everything about him looks tense. Even the flush splurging across his skin seems to have deepened a violent shade of maroon. 

And it scares Hiro. Loving, caring Tadashi never looks so - so _angry_. He wonders what his older brother is looking at, wonders if he can see the furious intruder that has taken his place. 

It takes him off guard, this tight heat that curls around his intestines, so sudden it makes his fingers twitch. 

A thick spike of pain surges through his left ankle. He hisses, and he shoots Mochi a death glare. She's playing with his loose shoelaces, sharp nails catching his skin. 

"Hiro?"

A gush of damp air hits the hallway. Tadashi is standing in the doorway, eyes soft, every ounce of anger washed away. The musky smell of lemon shampoo is puffing up against Hiro's face, and it smells so nice, and Tadashi is looking at him with those big caring eyes, and Hiro is left wondering if he'd maybe just imagined the stranger in the bathroom who had stolen his brother's face. 

"Mochi's being a fucking bitch," he says, flicking the heel of his shoe against the furry potato's butt. 

" _Hiro_ , language!" 

The words are harsh like static, and they hit him right in the abdomen, a verbal punch hurling him straight into whiplash. Mochi hisses, paws scrambling up the stairs, as if she can't get away fast enough. Hiro sucks in a mouthful of damp bathroom air. Tadashi's lips are clamped into a thin line, eyebrows scrunched a fraction. There's this spark firing up behind those corneas, a tiny glitch. Hiro ducks away. It's unwanted, a reflex that he hadn't been able to control. There's no fond annoyance on his brother's face, no amusement, just this strange intensity that Hiro has never been familiar with. 

Tadashi blinks. He shakes his head. Once. Twice. 

"Can you ask aunt Cass when dinner's ready?" he asks, lifting a hand to scrub over his damp face. And when his fingers leave his skin his features look tired, defeated almost. 

Hiro doesn't say a word. His brain won't let his limbs move. He's stuck, staring at Tadashi with worry and something else, something that he doesn't understand. 

 ✖︎ 

It doesn't get better, the way Hiro had expected it to. Tadashi is strung tight, an arrow flexed against its bow, ready to rip through the atmosphere. But it never does. It's like Tadashi is holding back, trying his best to keep himself from snapping right in two. He smiles. He always smiles, but the smiles never meet his eyes. Aunt Cass says it's a phase, that someone as kind and sweet as Tadashi just has to explode at some point. Gogo says it's manstruation. 

The most confusing part about all of it is that Hiro doesn't really mind. Of course, sometimes he will miss those caring remarks and that softness looking down at him from beneath the bill of a grey baseball cap. But there's something about this strange Tadashi that makes his fingers twitch and his skin go numb. It's a new feeling, irate like the heated turbulence scorching his insides every time his older brother snaps at him. 

_Hiro, stop being such an idiot!_

_Hiro, watch it!_

_Hiro, just stop whining will you!_

_Hiro. Hiro._ **_Hiro_ ** _._

And every time his body reacts to the barks he tries to find some sort of explanation. It's like getting punched, but it's a good punch. Hiro doesn't know how punches can be considered _good_ , but he thinks he almost likes it. It's the way Tadashi's eyes go dark, so dark it feels like he's staring straight into an oculus in the dead of the night. And his muscles will flex and tense beneath his crew neck t-shirts, the veins in his arms bulging under a changing pressure. 

And Hiro likes it. Hiro likes Tadashi when he's angry, when his fingers curl into tight fists, eyebrows tugging themselves into the middle of his face. He likes that intense shade of crimson bubbling up across those high cheekbones, as if his skull is being set on fire. 

Hiro catches himself enjoying the act of simply pissing him off. He'll intentionally slam the doors and leave his bed unmade just to hear that furious "Hiro" being flung straight into his ear canal and down into his stomach where it tears everything apart. 

 

He knows there's something seriously messed up about all of it. There are so many questions spiraling around his head, and usually someone like Hiro should have found the answers already. But every time he feels like he's close to an explanation, his brain will scramble, almost as if somebody is forcing a mixer into his skull and flicking it on overdrive. 

✖︎ 

"Nng…"

"Be quiet!" 

The words are cut off by an annoyed grumble, and Hiro makes a show of letting his breath hitch in his throat, just a little louder than needed. David pinches his arm. The brief pain courses right through his limbs like a fizz of voltage. It's a nice pain, and it's not enough. He wants more of it. But David is always so indifferent with him, always making sure his touches are blunt, kisses fleeting and so calculated they leave Hiro squirming, needy for something rough and filthy. David won't pay any attention to that. Maybe he just doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to make a mess of Hiro, the way he aches for it. 

David is on the verge of boring, and there are times where it feels like he doesn't even want to be there - with Hiro.   


But he's the first guy who is so willing to _try_ with him, and so he forces himself not to complain too much. 

_It's for science,_ he keeps on reminding himself like the words are capable of creating some sort of solid consolidation. 

But at this point, he's pretty sure he is in fact exclusively into guys. 

David is a few years older than him, a senior at SFIT that Hiro had met a couple of times in the robotics lab. It had taken a few carefully executed winks to get David to notice the freshman and for said freshman to figure out if he really was "into the peen, if you know what I mean", the way Fred had hinted every time he'd caught Hiro staring at the blonde haired boy a little too long to be considered friendly. And they'd started fooling around here and there, sneaking out into the empty courtyards and vacant classrooms just to have a go at each other. To Hiro, it was just a means to understand those "powerful new urges" Baymax had informed him about. To David, it was just - well, Hiro wasn't really sure. 

It had almost turned into a routine, a systematic execution that had lost its romance just as quick as it had attained it. If one could even consider them having attained any sort of romance at any point throughout their brief encounters. 

It's just sex. It isn't serious. It has never been serious.  

It is, however, for science, lots and lots of freaking science, science that Hiro is currently being denied from.

"I just want you to fucking take me!" he breathes against the other boy's lips, teeth bumping against each other with the squirming he has immersed himself into. David huffs, and he starts shifting away, and that is definitely not what Hiro wants. He clutches at the other boy's shoulders, hips rutting against his thigh in a reckless rhythm. He _needs, needs, needs_. He _needs_ so much, and he is so incredibly willing, and all he _needs_ is for David to just -

"What the - Hiro, stop! Jesus Christ. What's up with you today?" 

The other boy rips his way out of the tight embrace. He falls back onto his hunches, staring down at the greedy little thing sprawled across the crumpled comforter. Hiro's head feels like it's close to combusting, and he knows his pants are on the verge of tearing under a very similar kind of pressure. David's eyes are strained against his, and the green of his irises looks dull, lifeless almost, as if he's staring down at a term paper that he doesn't have the motivation to finish. Everything about him looks muted, like clothing that has been washed one too many times, the intensity of the colors drained out by soap and cold water.  Hiro stretches his arms out, a pout distorting the bottom of his face. He knows he's acting like a child, but at this point he's far too horny to care. 

"C'mon! Just - _please_!" 

The last word is a barely audible whimper. David's eyebrows look like thick caterpillars that are squirming towards the center of his face. His nubby fingers are tugging down his rumpled sweater, the thin swivel of skin swallowed by the lump fabric. 

_No, no, no._

The word is a thundering mantra. Hiro can't have this right now. He needs friction. He needs heat, and fervor, and the kind of intensity that makes his muscles go taut and his moans go lewd.  Hiro surges forward, scrambling to get David back on top of him. It's more of a means to wind him up, to get him really annoyed, maybe even furious, mad - _angry_.  He isn't usually like this. He's never this insistent, so ready to be ripped apart and turned inside out. 

But today is different. Today, he just _needs_. 

_"Hiro! What did I tell you about not leaving the garage door open!" Tadashi is shouting now, and his voice is so sharp it's cutting straight through the humidity of the garage. Hiro's breath is quickening. His skin is tingling, sensory sparks mixing with the sweat that's pooling in the dip between his shoulder blades. It's a bucket of heat, a few drops short from spilling down his spine._

_"I'm sorry! I wasn't thinking about Mochi still being here!" he answers, voice tiny, barely loud enough to be heard by his own ears. Tadashi crumples his fingers together, forming fists at the base of his arms. His hands look so big._

Hiro has his fingers tightly curled into David's hair, tugging at the strands in a way that makes the other boy grunt. His legs are wrapped around his torso, heels digging into his back. He's holding on, clutching at him, as if he's afraid of being let go. He knows David doesn't like this. David doesn't like heat, doesn't like things that are defined by too much magnitude. David likes chaste kisses and shallow thrusts and minimal eye contact and lots and lots of silence. 

" _I deactivated her tracker because I was going to fucking fix the glitch, and now she's gone!"_

_Tadashi won't calm down. It's like his rage is growing with each step Hiro takes into the opposite direction. He hadn't realized that he'd been backing away, an antelope gingerly retreating in hopes that the predator won't pursue it._

_"Mochi always comes back, Dashi. She'll be fine. We'll just leave the backdoor open, and she'll -"_

_"No, Hiro! It's just… you never - just start listening to me for once!"_

_Tadashi rips his cap from his head, hair fizzing out into every direction, as if his anger has somehow triggered the fibers to follow suit. He's staring at Hiro, and it's intense, and Hiro's torn between wanting to run away and wanting to make that intensity grow._

_The last thought makes his stomach churn._

David is a constant pressure that is trying to escape him, but Hiro is holding him in place, breathing in the feral grunts and the harsh breaths. There's a throbbing heat grinding against his nether regions, and he knows the other boy seems to be remotely into it. But the thought doesn't take up much space in his heat-overloaded brain. All he wants is _more_. He wants the kisses to be harder, the touches to be tighter, the moans to be filthier. 

_"It was a mistake! It happens! I'm sorry!" Hiro responds, and only now does he realize the gravel pressing against the knobs of his spine. He has forced himself into the corner, body trying to get as far away as possible. But there's this strain that is cementing itself into his gut, the tension spreading out into his limbs with each breath he forces out of his lungs. Tadashi lets out this grating sound, and Hiro doesn't know if it's a distorted word or just an animalistic growl, but it spirals straight through his ears and fuels the fire devouring his intestines._

_Tadashi flings his cap across the room. His face is contorted in a way that makes him look rather frustrated than angry. His pupils are flicking from one place to the other, frantically bobbing from left to right, as if he's searching for something. He isn't looking at his little brother. Hiro needs him to just look him in the eye._

_But then Tadashi turns around without another word. He slams the door behind him. Hiro flinches with the shuddering impact and watches as a screwdriver rolls down the desk and clatters against the floor. The thought of all of this having nothing to do with Mochi and tracker glitches becomes more imminent with each silent second that passes._

_There's something so wrong about it, and Hiro can't figure out what the hell it is. He should hate it. He should hate the way Tadashi shouts, and curses, and spirals into his own frustration. But he doesn't._

_He presses his spine against the scratchy surface of the garage wall. His feet are slipping, knees crumpling. He plops onto the floor._

_Maybe it isn't the anger he likes; m_ _aybe it's the intensity._

Hiro is panting into the warmth of David's sodden mouth. The other boy's touches are hesitant, as if he doesn't know what to do and isn't sure if he wants to continue. There's something off about it, like a barely noticeable typo in a coding. And as Hiro grinds against the foreign flesh he can't help the way his brain is tugging his thoughts into a dangerous direction. 

David's thick hands are being replaced with slender fingers, so needy in the pressure they execute. The shoulders above him are broadening, arms thickening, torso sliming down a fraction. Hiro finds himself tightening his grip around David's sweaty neck, lips so urgent in their demands. His groans are wanton, loud enough for him to hear the residue of them ringing in his own ears. He's lost in a haze, red and hot and - familiar. 

_Hiro_. 

He doesn't know if the voice is in his head, but it sounds so real, so close. It's tense like a command, syllables slipping out of a slim mouth that has a tendency of kicking out smiles that quirk the slightest bit more to the right than to the left. 

_Hiro_. 

"Ta - da - ha -"

Tadashi. 

_Tadashi_.

Hiro's eyes snap open. David is being shoved off of his body. Hiro scrambles to grab him, but the other boy tumbles off of the bed with a squawk, a sound so loud it hurls Hiro straight out his trance. He's back, brain completely rebooted - _online_. 

And for the first time that might actually be a very bad thing. 

"What the hell." 

Tadashi is towering over the foreign boy, nostrils flaring, fists clenched tight like vice grips. He's angry. He's really, really angry. 

"My little brother, David! Are you - _shitting me?_ "

"Tadashi, man. Look, I - " 

But David's words are cut short as Tadashi rips him back onto his knees. The other boy has his legs crossed, a hand trying to cover the front of his jeans. His face looks like it's trying to suck itself into his own skull. Hiro probably looks just as constipated. He can't move. Never in his life has he been so mortified that he didn't even have the strength to flick a single finger. He wants to scream. He wants to bawl and thunder and tell Tadashi to just let the guy go because this has nothing to do with him. He wants to shout that this isn't fair and that he has no right to drag David out of their goddamned house like a criminal. 

But Hiro's vocal chords are knotted together, and all he manages to do is breathe and hate himself and thank God that his erection has been killed off, because he would definitely not be in the mood for dealing with a serious case of blue-balls.

He can hear Tadashi haul David down the stairs like a sack of potatoes.

_Thud_. 

"Ow!"

_Thud_.

"What the fuck, man?!" 

_Thud_.  

"Ah - shit."

_Thud_.

"Look, I can explain."

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

Great. Spectacular. Just fantastic. 

Hiro's so screwed. 

✖︎

"I'm 17! What's the big deal?"

"He's a senior!"

"So? How is that even important?"

"He's taking advantage of you!"

"And you think I care?"

Tadashi's face goes slack. He opens his mouth for a retaliation, but he is cut off when a series of squeaks announces Baymax's ascent. 

"The patient has been successfully scanned," the bot rings.

Hiro peeks his head out of the blanket burrito he has wrapped himself into. 

"Patient? What patient?" he shrieks. He hates how puberty decides that now is the perfect time for vocal fluctuations. 

"David Henderson has undergone a minor head injury and a contusion on his left knee. The healing process may take 10 to 14 days, dependent on what treatment is introduced to the injured areas," the bot points out, a finger coming up into the air with a slight mechanical whirr. Baymax turns in a circle, balloon limbs brushing and squeezing against Tadashi and Hiro's overfilled cabinet. A series of books clatter across the floor boards. A tense silence follows that is accompanied by nothing but the squeaks of the bot's feet plopping back down the stairs.  

Hiro stares at his older brother, watching as his mouth contorts into a thin line. He readjusts his cap lower, his brown eyes swallowed into the shadow cast by the bill.

"You hit him?!" Hiro hisses, annunciating each word, as if he has to make them clear to himself and himself alone. 

"What are you even doing with a - guy like that, Hiro?" Tadashi asks, completely dodging the question. Hiro hates when his brother answers his questions with another question. It's a tactic that the older Hamada has almost perfected.

Almost.

The way he pronounces 'guy' makes it sound almost surprised, and there's this slight undertone to the word, something so deep Hiro doesn't have enough time to analyze it. Tadashi has always been open about his sexual preferences.  Hiro, not so much. 

But the cat's out of the bag now. 

He really isn't looking forward to the unnecessary gay-sex-talk with aunt Cass, the awkward one-on-one convo that had left Tadashi completely mortified when he had first come out. If he's being completely honest, he isn't looking forward to talking to aunt Cass at all. She is currently immersing herself into a "super duper secret spy session" regarding the new competition of the Lucky Cat Café only a few blocks away, which is why Hiro had dragged David into the house in the first place. Tadashi wasn't even supposed to be home so early. He isn't supposed to be here. Nobody was supposed to find out - except for Mochi. But Mochi has kept all of Hiro's secrets for the past five years. Mochi is good at keeping her mouth shut.  Tadashi, on the other hand, is horrible at it. 

His older brother has his arms folded in front of his chest, and his left foot is twitching, a clear indicator that his brain is on overdrive.

"Is he forcing you to - "

"Of course not!" Hiro cuts him off before his brother decides to mumble out any awkward accusations. If anything, it's the other way around.

"Are you two like - " Tadashi takes a deep breath, his broad chest puffing up like a balloon ready to explode. " _Together_?" He breathes the word out, his voice thinned by the air being forced out of his lungs. His brother lifts his head, and he's staring at Hiro with that vacant look that makes his chest feel empty. He doesn't like Tadashi's face like that. It's blank like a white sheet of paper. 

"No! It's - it's not like that! Definitely not!" Hiro coughs, and he tries to keep his voice steady as he rambles out the rest of the words. Tadashi's left foot stops twitching. 

"Then what is it? I mean David, he's -" 

"Oh, please. Are you going to tell me that David's a bad guy because we both know he isn't."

And he really isn't. David is a clumsy robotics engineering student who tends to break his bots a little too often. They're not great bots. He's bad at innovation. But he's not a bad guy. 

"How - " Tadashi clears his throat, eyes roaming the chaotic interior of Hiro's side of the room. "How long has this been going on?" It's too tense to be a question. It's a demand. 

"That's none of your business," Hiro spits. He pulls the sheets over his head, trying his best to smother himself to death with the right amount of enforcement. This is humiliating. 

"If you don't want me to tell aunt Cass that you broke house rule number three, then it is very much my business," Tadashi retorts with the kind of spite that makes Hiro roll his eyes. 

_Hamada House Rule Number 1: Whoever cooks does not have to clean up the kitchen or the dining area._

_Hamada House Rule Number 2: Friday is family night - no 'buts'._

_Hamada House Rule Number 3: No boyfriends/girlfriends inside of the house without someone else being in the house or in a five foot radius around the house - no, Mochi and Baymax don't count. Keep the bedroom door open._

"David's not my boyfriend."

"How long, _Hiro_?" 

Hiro tenses at the way he says his name, rough, like living, breathing static.

"Ampf," he mumbles into the mattress. 

"What?"

Hiro lets out a puff of air before pulling the sheets back. He hoists himself up, buckling his calves under his thighs. He doesn't look at Tadashi, eyes strained against the action of his own fingers weaving themselves in and out of the dark fabric of his blanket. His brother is staring at him. He can feel it, prickles nibbling themselves into the top of his head. 

"A month."

Tadashi stays quiet for far too long, so long that Hiro is forced to look up. It seems to take his brother off guard, and he watches him hastily pull the bill of his baseball cap down. But he had seen Tadashi's eyes.

Empty.

The angry stranger is back, and he's taken Tadashi's place. The sight of that foreign blankness is making Hiro's stomach revolt. He doesn't like this feeling. It's confusing. It's scary. He can't help but recall the name that had been on the verge of spilling out from between his lips in the middle of a rut. 

_Tadashi_. 

Hiro feels like throwing up. All of this makes him angry. He wants to scream. He wants to thrash his limbs about like he's a hyperactive child that doesn't want to be be put to sleep. The heat in his stomach is buzzing, and it's protruding out of his pores, curling around him like a foggy organism.

"Did you - have you… done anything? I mean have you two -"

"Yes! Okay? We have sex, Tadashi! That's all there is to it! That's all it is!" 

Hiro doesn't know why he's shouting. He doesn't know why he sounds so irritated, so heated in the way he is trying to justify something that can't be justified. He's not angry at Tadashi. He's angry at himself, at all the messed up things tumbling through his headspace like some neurological tornado. The blankness of his brother's face is wiped off clean, and all that's left is something far darker than the anger from before. Hiro retreats into the cocoon of sheets as he watches Tadashi's fingers curl more and more into the palms of his hands, tension tightening like nails being screwed into wood. 

"Tell him it's over." 

Hiro's jaw drops. He rips the blankets from his head, scrambling to twist his limbs out of the material. 

"What?" he snaps. "You can't just - why are you even -"

"Because I'm your big brother, and I say so, _Hiro_!" 

And there it is again, this rough bark that is setting his intestines ablaze. _Hiro_. 

"I'm not five anymore!" he shouts back. He presses his hands into the mattress below, letting the pressure build in his arms in time with each tap of Tadashi's left foot.  "You can't tell me what to do anymore! I'm old enough now! I make my own decisions!"

"Not when one of those decisions is screwing a senior."

It's a dry remark, words followed up by a throaty laugh. It's the first time that Hiro doesn't like his brother's laugh. It's ugly. Tadashi's laughter is never ugly. 

"That's not fair. That is _not fair_!" Hiro revolts, pounding both hands into the sheets like a child. "Just because I'm not afraid to let other people in?" he continues, voice a little harsher than he had intended it to be. 

Tadashi swallows. He shifts. His foot stops tapping. 

Hiro knows he hit a spot. He knows Tadashi hates it when people tease him about never wanting to involve himself romantically. He has friends, good friends that he cares about, but whenever things get too serious he'll back away like some timid kitten retreating into the shadows. Tadashi hates putting himself out there, because he hates caring about himself. It's always about others. It's never about himself.  Hiro hadn't meant to bring it up. He never means to, but sometimes when they fight things get out of hand, and he'll steer everything into a direction that neither of them want to get into. It's Hiro's fault. It's always Hiro's fault. He knows that Tadashi never digs up things that could really hurt. But Hiro does because Hiro's an asshole like that. 

"Tell him it's over or I will," he says. It sounds normal, words scrubbed clean from any lingering anger. Hiro knows he's dead serious. 

"You don't get to do that! Hell, you don't get to hit random people either!" Hiro shouts, and it's so desperate, a sad attempt at retaliation. 

"David Henderson? David freaking Henderson?" 

Tadashi says the other boy's name like he still can't believe it. It doesn't even sound like he's saying it to anybody in particular. He's just flinging it out there. 

Hiro feels guilty. There is no reason for him to feel guilty, but he feels so, so guilty. All he wants is to disappear under the covers, and maybe even disappear from the face of the earth for a few days - or maybe forever. 

"Of all people, you deserve so much better, Hiro."

And then he lifts his head, and his bill is angled high enough for the warmth of the afternoon light to spill onto his features. His eyes are big and occupied, and there's a tiny smile tugging at the right side of his mouth. He doesn't look angry or frustrated or sad. He looks like loving, caring, brotherly Tadashi Hamada.  For a brief moment it feels like the fights of the past few weeks were just some bizarre cosmic defect, a slight error that had befallen the universe of the Hamada household.

An error that won't linger if you don't let it.  It feels like it could all go back to normal now. The past could be so easily erased with a single reciprocating smile. 

Hiro's so close to putting two and two together. Maybe he already has. Maybe he's just afraid of being faced with an explanation that he won't be able to handle.

Hiro doesn't want anything to go back to normal.  

Hiro doesn't smile. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me (probably) or is frustrated Tadashi super appealing ಠ_ಠ  
> Sorry for the really bad characterization of David Henderson and the fact that his name is David Henderson. His real name is Willy Washeteria. I'm not kidding. That's his name in the first draft, because of - I don't know - really bizarre reasons... I'm lazy. Laziness makes me create two-dimensional characters with caterpillar eyebrows and stupid names. Sorry.  
> Hiro's perf, Willy! Get your shit together, bruh!


	2. Fix It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel obligated to apologize for all the confusing metaphors in this one D: The second I refer to a butt hole as a chocolate star fish someone please slap me in the face!

It's like a lightbulb trying to obtain its full beam. Every single second is filled with that building tension, voltage tugging more and more light into the translucent stomach. 

It's the explanation, the solution to the equation he is scribbling onto his brain tissue, day after day, night after night. 

The voltage comes in spurts, triggered by every little action of his brother. It's like Hiro's keeping tabs, analyzing and evaluating, combining ideas and throwing away things he can neglect. That's the way his brain works. It's like his head is one gigantic mesh of gears, their shifts so languid they barely convert enough energy into movements. He can't think properly. Shit like this doesn't happen to Hiro. Mental barricades are usually not a problem. They never last long enough for him to be two seconds short from ripping his hair out. But now Hiro is faced with the most gargantuan barricade he's ever seen, and he's trying to crash right through it with all his might. It just won't budge. 

"Tadashi, what's wrong? You're not eating your chicken wings." 

Aunt Cass leans forward and flicks the bill of her nephew's cap. The older boy grumbles. Cass huffs. She shoots Hiro a concerned look, her sculpted eyebrows tugging themselves upward. 

'What's wrong with him?' she mouths, eyeing him in a way that seems like she's hoping he actually knows what's going on. Hiro shrugs his shoulders, averting his attention back to his fork stabbing his chicken wings. He's not hungry. 

Aunt Cass is staring down at Mochi. Her eyebrows start to wiggle, and it’s like the two of them are caught in some sort of telepathic conversation that is becoming more and more heated by the second. It's quiet. It's too quiet. It's uncharacteristic for everybody to keep their thoughts locked inside of their skulls like they're afraid of breaking the silence. 

It's been like this for days. 

Hiro doesn't know why aunt Cass is still acting like this is something new, her shock so genuine every time her nephews avoid every and all eye contact. It's becoming a routine, and that is very dangerous. 

Tadashi isn't angry. He hasn't snapped in exactly 96 hours, a stark contrast to the past weeks that have been filled with a non-stop loop of " _Hiro_! _Hiro_! _Hiro_!".

He doesn't know where to put all of his confusion. His mind is caught inside of a hurricane, trembling and twisting every time Tadashi speaks to him. It isn't tense anymore, no anger eating away at the syllables. It's normal, a little too normal, so normal it almost feels forced. It's his hands that give it away, and Hiro knows that nothing is normal.  Tadashi has permanent fists hanging from the base of his arms, and they're strung so tight that it looks like he's about to wreck his knuckles through the universe. His brother looks so ready to explode - but he doesn't. He avoids every single conflict that bubbles up, averting his gazes and letting his eyes disappear under the bill of his baseball cap. It's so much worse than anger. It's so much worse than shouting and bawling and fighting. It's like Tadashi is turning his back on Hiro without actually physically doing so. It's like he's walking away while standing still.

Hiro doesn't want him to leave. Hiro wants him to stay. 

He wants him to react to his sad attempts at creating unnecessary problems, challenging him to fights that shouldn't be partaken in. He wants Tadashi to snap. At this point, he doesn't even care anymore. He wants Tadashi to slam him against a wall and scream at him so loud he'll hear the residue of his voice for days, ear canals trying their best to mend the rips and tears.

But his brother stays silent as Hiro crashes into him at every given opportunity. Tadashi doesn't move. He doesn't flinch. He doesn't even look at him. He just lets his younger brother do whatever he wants. And it doesn't even feel like he's ignoring Hiro. It feels like he's disappearing. 

His brother is sitting exactly one meter away, but it feels like he's slipping through the expanse of the universe, and Hiro is trying his best to hold on tight. 

But he's too small, too weak to keep him here. 

✖︎

"So… Finding Nemo or Krogar Genesis: Attack of the Kaijus?" Aunt Cass asks, holding up two DVDs with an expectant grin. 

"Krogar!" Hiro shouts, lifting both arms into the air, as if his bashing hands will make his decision even more obvious. He holds his breath, and he's waiting for the annoyed grumble that follows everything that has anything to do with _Krogar Genesis_. But the annoyed grumble never comes and neither does the humorous Dory reference that always makes Hiro roll his eyes so hard it tingles the top of his sockets.  Hiro hates _Finding Nemo_ , an opinion so unpopular that even Mochi lets out an exasperated huff whenever he has the guts to say it out loud. But he'll always let Tadashi have his way on movie nights because he likes the way his brother's eyes light up every five seconds. He'll let out these little snorts and act like a goofy child. He'll pull Hiro close and mouth the lines of every single character into the crown of his head, and Hiro will catch himself smiling and leaning into his brother's side, all warm and soft and safe. And he won't pay any attention to the happenings on the flickering screen. He'll just watch Tadashi's mouth quirk the slightest bit more to the right than to the left. 

Aunt Cass bites her lip, eyes flicking from Hiro to Tadashi, expectant to hear the eldest's opinion chime in. But he doesn't say, "Nemo. Krogar's story line emphasizes nothing but unnecessary violence. They're making a second one. Unbelievable.". Instead, he says something that has never been uttered on Hamada Family Nights. 

"I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

There's a mini nuclear explosion tearing through the living room. Aunt Cass lets the DVDs clatter to the floor. Mochi hisses. Baymax falls from the couch with a puff. 

"But - But it's family night," aunt Cass says, features drooping into a frown. Tadashi shuffles away from behind the sofa, cap tugged low. He pulls his mouth into a thin line.

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm just - It's just it's been a long day, and - uh, I'm really beat," he mumbles, feet already steering towards the staircase. 

"Hey, Dashi, wait!" 

Hiro clambers around the coffee table, reaching out a hand to grip his brother's wrist. It's a little more insistent than he had intended it to be. Tadashi slivers to a stop, and he looks down at Hiro, and his heart drops into his stomach and all the way down to the floor. It's like he's staring into a ravaged sea storm, dark waves hitting the back of those corneas like they're trying to break out of their confinements. Tadashi's features are slipping out of their blankness, distorting like a barely noticeable rip in the mask he has pulled over his skull.  Hiro is being hit by a tidal wave, ears rushing and limbs fighting against the heavy tow. There's heat - everywhere. And it aches, and it throbs, and when Tadashi curls his fingers around Hiro's wrist his heart is sputtering all over the floor like it's being electrocuted, fibers vibrating with shudder after shudder.  His brother's fingers are dry and warm, and they're squeezing around his bones with a kind of strain that's hard enough to hurt. Hiro's stomach is doing that thing again. His insides are tightening like coils, preparing themselves for the heat that they know is going to crash into them like a freight train.

But it doesn't get that far. 

Hiro lets go. Tadashi lets go. 

"I'm really exhausted, Hiro." 

_You have no idea._

✖︎

"Whoah. What's up with you two? Was Mochi doing that weird midnight mating call thing again? I mean, you guys look like you haven't slept in ages."

Hiro cocks an eyebrow at Fred. The boy is lazily sprawled across the electromagnetic hover chair. There's an open bag of Doritos pressed against his chest, cheese powder spilling onto his Dr. Sinister t-shirt. Tadashi plucks the bag out of Fred's cheesy fingers as he makes his way to the back of the lab. His mouth barely kicks out a smile. Fred stares after him, and when Tadashi slams his satchel onto the nearest work bench with a kind of shudder that makes even the electromagnetic chair twitch, he hisses, "Is he - like - _broken_?"

Hiro lets out a puff of air, shoulders slumping a little more towards the ground. At this point, he might actually be taking that into consideration, that and the fact that he's on the verge of falling right out of his acquired front seat on the 'Tadashi Hamada Roller Coaster Ride'. 

"I swear it's manopause," Gogo mumbles around a mouthful of chewing gum. She kicks the hover chair, smirking when Fred flails onto the metal floor. The other boy flops onto his back, not moving an inch, even when the dark haired girl starts flicking the tip of her boot into his ribs. 

"Stop bumming around. You're supposed to be helping Wasabi with the whole laser induced plasma thing."

"Hey! It's not a 'thing'. It's the _bomb,_ " Wasabi intervenes, gloved fingers strapping his safety goggles onto the top of his dreads. He's leaning his broad shoulders against Lil' Sammy, the lonely rejected 3D printer that nobody has had the motivation to fix. But they leave him in the lab. He's part of it in away, part of the collective chaos consisting of clutters of machines and work benches drowning in tinkers and crumpled pieces of sketchbook paper. Usually, Hiro feels so at home in the midst of the systematic disarray. But there's something cold about the lab today. It's uncomfortable. The metal flooring has never looked so bleak. The space feels cooped up, grey walls capturing him in a cage of dry air. 

Hiro lets his gaze flick upward, and he watches a broken neon tube sputter and spit all by its lonesome. The twitches of light are a tiny bother that is adding to the tension squeezing the back of his neck. 

"Yeah, okay, bomb whatever." Gogo plops into the vacant hover chair, her weight shifting the electromagnetic field towards Hiro. Strands of her cropped hair are falling into her forehead as she quirks her head to the side, eyes squinting, left cheek puffed with gum. 

"You two still working on that upgrade for Baymax?"

The question seems to come out of the blue. Hiro watches the way her left eyebrow starts to climb up her forehead the longer he takes to reply. He shifts and clears his throat. 

"Uh - yeah."

His eyes catch Tadashi shuffling around thetool corner, watching as the other boy rips extension cords from their hangers just a little too forcefully. 

"How's it been going?" She hacks further. Hiro snaps his attention back to Gogo. Her pupils are flicking from left to right, analyzing both of his eyes, as if she believes she'll find something if she just looks hard enough. She hoists her feet up and rests them on Fred's stomach. He doesn't seem to mind. 

"Yeah, dude how's it been going? Heard you're upgrading the chip. Chip. Chips. Hey, Tadashi - _Doritos_!" Fred shouts, stretching out his arms and wiggling them like noodles. 

"The crumbs get into everything. Eat them outside.“ 

It’s a gruff answer. Tadashi has his back faced towards them, and Hiro watches the way the muscles in his arms tense as he rips around the cords like he's on a freaking mission to tear them apart.

He swallows and presses out, "It's been going okay."

That's a big fat lie. It's been the exact opposite of 'okay'. It's been going so bad that the so called 'upgrade' is drastically loosing its 'up'. Usually, Tadashi and him work well together. They're good at innovation. They think the same things, analyze the same way, all the while leaving enough space in between for each of them to keep their own quirks. They tend to share every single thought when they're working on a project, hinting at little clues the other might've missed, finishing each other's thought processes and filling in the blanks. It's what they've always done, going each step of the way _together_. It reminds him of the puzzles they'd solved when they were small. Two little kids contemplating on what piece fit where, nagging at each other when things went downhill. But they'd always climbed their way back up. They'd always found a solution.

This is different. They're not synching, brains so different in their train of thought. It's like they're two gears that just won't click, no matter how many times they try to slide their teeth into each other's slots. 

"Mhm." Gogo folds her arms in front of her chest. She doesn't look like she believes him one bit. Her plump cheeks are brightening a shade of violent red. That's the first stage of the Gogo's-getting-super-pissed-off scale. The next stage is 'puckered lips'. 

"But there are some problems with the coding and stuff," Hiro adds, trying his best to keep his voice steady. Gogo's jaw is clenching and flexing. A pink bubble is growing out of her mouth like a balloon. 

It pops. Hiro blinks. Gogo puckers her lips. 

The girl hoists herself out of the chair, the metal cringing as it bobs up into the air. She steps over Fred's stomach. The boy smacks his beanie against the back of her calves. 

She's inches away, and her sweet bubblegum breath is ghosting along Hiro's nose. She digs a finger into his chest, hard enough for it to feel like a pinch. She narrows her almond eyes. There's a kind of sharpness to them that makes it feel like they're nailing his head into place. 

"Fix it," she orders, and  Hiro knows she doesn't mean the coding. 

He wants to fix it. But at this point, he's too afraid to even remotely touch it. What if he breaks it even more? What if it crumbles and burns, and he's at fault - like always. 

Honey Lemon prances into the lab, twirling and whirling like a yellow tornado. She's bursting into a song, and her bright voice is ringing like wind chimes. It's the first time Hiro doesn't enjoy it.  

✖︎

David won't answer any of his calls - or texts, or pokes, or sticky notes he'd sent pinned to Megabot's back. 

_"Look, Hiro, you guys have some serious issues to deal with."_

 The words are turning and twisting around in his skull, letters rearranging themselves until they're nothing but this giant blob of gibberish. 

That's all David had said to him when Hiro had finally managed to get a hold of the other boy in the botanic's lab - of all places. And Hiro had had to force himself not to punch another bruise into his face. It would've gone perfectly with the violet discoloration that was already splattered against the left side of his face.  He'd looked so detached, as if he was rattling down the elements of the periodic table. And normally, Hiro doesn't mind the disinterested expression bunching up beneath those caterpillar eyebrows. Hiro doesn't mind the way his green eyes look deserted or the way his silence coats the inside of his skull in a blanket of dust. 

It's confusing to suddenly find himself _minding,_ because the wish of David maybe caring a little more has never manifested itself into something more than just a tiny nuisance. Hiro had never complained. Hiro had always believed that that is what he’d wanted. 

Casual indifference. It's easy. It's light. It's not serious. 

But now he finds himself needing something else, something hot and heavy, coursing so deep it'll make him squirm and clutch at his chest to dig it out. 

And maybe Hiro creates this alternate fantasy where David hits Tadashi back, and runs into the house, and swings Hiro over his shoulder, and straps on rocket boots, and flies them to the moon, and fucks him into infinity until he dies without a single drop of semen left in his balls. 

Because, yeah - maybe Hiro wants that. Maybe he wants rapture and frenzy and that feeling you get when the adrenaline hits your bloodstream. Maybe he wants heated fights and furious sex. Maybe he wants a hurricane to ravage through his system and break everything, break _him_.

And maybe he wants someone to hold him tight and look at him, really look at him and tell him he has the universe in his eyes.

Hiro plops onto his bed and digs his face into the nearest pillow. 

He didn't even like _The Notebook._

Timid fingers wrap themselves around his left wrist. He doesn't realize what he's doing until the dull ache makes his stomach kick. But it doesn't feel right. His fingers aren't long enough, not calloused and smooth. He remembers the storm in his brother's eyes and the intensity that could cause internal bleeding. 

_Serious issues._

It's a hint, a piece of information that Hiro is adding to the unfinished equation that won't let itself be solved. He needs the solution to make sense. He needs to have a reasonable answer that will smother the turmoil in his head. He hates this, this feeling of knowing but not knowing at the same time. Maybe it's an inkling, a barely existent particle of that ominous explanation. And it's so frustrating. It's tearing him apart, wrenching through his flesh and cutting him in two. It reminds him of the feeling he’d tangled himself into when he’d tried to figure out how to get his Microbots to react to headband transmitters. Hiro had been two breaths short from tearing his sketchbook to shreds. But Tadashi had smiled, and he'd hugged him, and he'd been so warm, and Hiro had felt the anger melt away.

But Tadashi isn't here now. Tadashi is at some stupid frat party. Tadashi doesn't do frat parties. He has the tendency of calling them "A collective Human Mass of Inebriation and Bad Decisions". And yet, that's exactly where he is. Since when are college parties more important than lab work and aunt Cass' chicken wings?

_Since the angry stranger took his place._

Hiro wrenches his fingers away from his wrist. His skin is burning. He hadn't noticed how tight he'd been holding on. 

"Uuuugghhh…" He groans at the _Kaiju Krogar_ poster plastered to the ceiling of the attic. 

A series of bubbly squeaks make him grumble a little louder. He mentally prepares himself to not jump out of the window as he rolls onto his stomach and presses a pillow over the back of his head. 

"Hello. I am Baymax, your personal healthca - "

"I know, Baymax. I know!" he muffles into the mattress. He can't deal with Stay Puft Marshmallow Man's doppelganger right now. If he's being completely honest, he can't even deal with himself.

"I heard a sound of distress. What seems to be the problem?"

Hiro digs his nose further into the comforter, so far he can barely breathe. 

"Nothing. I'm fine! Please, just - go away." 

The bed starts shifting, and he knows Baymax is squeezing himself onto the remaining free space. 

"You are my patient. I am concerned."

Hiro rips the pillow from his head, coming up for a breath of fresh air. The bot is leaning against the edge of the bed. He's staring down at the boy with his black button eyes.

"Scan complete."

Hiro huffs. 

"Baymax, please, just -"

"You have sustained no injuries. However, your hormone and neurotransmitter levels indicate that you are experiencing -"

"Baymax!" Hiro warns. His arms are stretched outward, hands pressing themselves against the bubbly mass in front of him. The elastic vinyl material is sucking his fingers in. It's soft and a little warm and -

Baymax grabs Hiro by his shoulders. Marshmallow limbs swallow him into a tight embrace. A temperate warmth starts molding around his front. It feels like Hiro is leaning against a giant, squishy light bulb. 

"You will be alright. There, there," the bot ensures, soft hands patting against his shoulder blades. Hiro wants to rip himself away. He wants Baymax to disappear. All he wants is to be left alone. But then he finds himself pressing his cheek further against the bot's elastic stomach, further against the perfect temperature of heat. For a moment the embrace almost feels alive, human, like those hugs Tadashi would give him on movie nights while watching _Finding Nemo._

Hiro misses those hugs. He misses the touches, the soft trembles of fingers climbing up and down his spine, pressure changing enough to make it feel more than just harmless. 

_ This is so messed up.  _

Hiro doesn't know if he says the words out loud. But they're there, permanent and heavy. They’re pulling that tight heat back into his stomach, the heat that only ever slips into his insides whenever he thinks about violent eyes hiding beneath the shadow of a baseball cap. Baymax squeezes Hiro a little further into his stomach. It feels like his bones are being crushed, but he knows Baymax means well. Baymax is just trying to make it all a little more bearable. And the thought of that makes Hiro dig his face further into the vinyl. The material smells like a mixture of warm plastic and fresh coffee grind.   

For a brief moment Hiro talks himself into believing that it will all be okay. But he knows not even perfectly counterbalanced heating systems and marshmallow hugs can mend reality. 

✖︎

_Hands roaming. Natural disasters. Hot breaths spelling words into spines. Nails tearing through barricades. Limbs knotted._

_Two hearts falling to their knees._

_Red. Voltage. Sin._

_Hiro._

_Hiro._

**_Hiro._ **

Hiro's eyes snap open. He's met with a void of darkness. He blinks. Once. Twice. His skin is scorching. It's hot between his legs. Remnants of a dream are tapered to his brain tissue. 

Images of sticky skin and red tongues and outlines of a familiar shadow.

"Hiro…"

It's a whisper. It's his name. Hiro. That's him. 

"Pssht. Be quiet. You'll wake him up." 

Fred. That's Fred. 

Hiro jerks his brain out of its comatose state. It's like hitting the ground. Hard. 

The attic is filled with whispers and shushed blips of laughter. Hiro knows what Wasabi sounds like when he's drunk. He giggles a lot. It’s probably because the alcohol washes away the paranoia for a brief period of time, but it comes back eventually, and hits him like a reverse caffein-crash. Hiro flinches at a series of thuds that feel like thunders in his sleep-sensitive state. He curls himself further into his sheets, breathing in the warmth. He is not in the mood for dealing with drunks. That's what Tadashi is for. It's like the guy was born with a "Designated Driver" badge, up and ready to take care of every single intoxicated soul the second he popped out of the uterus. 

"Just dump him on the bed."

"Dump. Dumps." 

Wasabi's giggles burst through the room, flinging themselves from wall to wall like a thousand bouncing balls. 

"Psssshhhhh…Cass. Sleeeeping." 

The words are slurred. It sounds bad. But even with intoxication distorting the syllables, Hiro would recognize that voice anywhere. There are a million speculations immediately hurling themselves into his headspace. 

_How the hell did alcohol get into his system?_

_Was it by accident?_

_Did someone force him?_

_Was he freaking roofied?!_

Hiro wants to slam the sheets from his body and shout, "Why the fuck did you let this happen?". But he knows Wasabi is going to crash into the ceiling if he's met with one of Hiro's outbursts, because that is all it will take for the big guy to fling himself back into his paranoia.

And a freaked out Wasabi is going to wake up aunt Cass. And aunt Cass being ripped out of her "beauty sleep" is going to be so much worse than a freaked out Wasabi. If she finds out, everybody is so dead. Everybody. 7 billion people. Ka- _Boom_. 

"Help me get him up! He's way heavier than he looks!" 

Hiro sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, clamping down hard. Wasabi doesn't stop giggling. Hiro wants to slap him in the face. 

"Dude! Help me get him -"

"Hirooo…"

It's a soft little whisper, and he can practically hear the smile tugging at his brother's mouth. It's confusing hearing him sound so sweet again. There’s nothing harsh about his voice, nothing crude or hurtful. 

“Yes. He's here. He's fine, Tada - Hey, no! Stop! _Your_ bed! Not his bed! No! Help me out here, dude. _Wasabi_ , stop hugging the bean bag!“ Fred hisses. Hiro can't believe Fred is the sober one. It feels like the universe has been turned upside down and inside out. How is any of this actually possible?

Hiro twists his fingers into his sheets, knuckles twitching whenever the floorboards are being hit with heavy thuds. Fred is trying to get Tadashi to stay in his bed. Wasabi is laughing so hard it sounds like he's choking. Fred is cursing. Hiro is stifling a groan. 

Tadashi is giggling like a child. It sounds like sunshine. 

Hiro’s brain starts to revolt, and just when he’s about to snap and get them all into trouble, Fred manages to bring order to the chaos.  Fred deserves a medal. Fred deserves all the medals, every single freaking one. Hiro holds his breath until the two of them have successfully reached the bottom of the staircase. Wasabi has stopped giggling. Hiro is thanking Jesus. He waits for the sound of lock bolts of a door to click into place before he flings the sheets aside and tumbles towards the nearest window. Wasabi's car is haphazardly parked at the corner of the street. Hiro digs his teeth into his bottom lip as he waits for two figures to slip out the backdoor. 

_Don't wake up aunt Cass. Don't wake up aunt Cass. Don't wake up aunt Cass._

The words repeat themselves in a seemingly endless loop. Hiro can't handle an apocalypse right now. Nobody can die today. 

He lets out a puff of air when two woozy shadows tumble through the glow of the street lanterns. He slips down into the kitchen when the groan of the car engine finally cuts through the silence of the night - morning, actually. 

3:53 am, to be exact. 

Hiro doesn't know why there's this strange anger painting his vision red, but the thought of his older brother being the one dragged home all drunk and out of it at 3:53 in the morning makes him grit his teeth. 

_Hiro's_  the one who makes the bad decisions.He's the one who does stupid things. Tadashi is the one who situates a trash can next to his bed and drowns in him in a liter of water and Alka-Seltzer. _  
_

But today seems to be filled with far too many exceptions. 

Tadashi is sprawled across his mattress, hair a disgruntled mess, sweater crumpled. One of his mint colored sneakers is missing. Hiro doesn't even want to begin speculating.  He slides a trash can towards the edge of the bed. The little clank against the wooden frame makes his brother twitch. Hiro watches him jerk his head towards him.  His eyes snap open. The street lights are spilling into the attic, their warm gleam making Tadashi’s eyes look like polychromatic kaleidoscopes. Never have they looked so large, endless amber oceans filled with so many things Hiro wants to understand. There's no anger in them, no turbulence. They're serene, waves rippling in soft motions. 

It's like Hiro can finally take a gulp of fresh air. Tadashi's back. This is loving, caring Tadashi.  Hiro watches his mouth flex into a drunken smile. It’s tugging his large ears upward, and it makes him look so young, so foolish, like a child. 

"Hiro." 

The whisper slips out from behind that tender grin, all soft and smooth like a warm breeze. It’s as if through the course of the past weeks Hiro has been numbed to all things gentle. It feels like he's hearing his name being spoken so lightly for the very first time. And it's such a relief to hear his brother speak in such a tone, to have his brown eyes look up at him instead of staring daggers into his face.

This is normal Tadashi. This is his older brother, the one that forces him to watch _Finding Nemo_ and finish his vegetables, the one that still holds his hand when crossing the street, even though Hiro is almost just as tall as him. The fact that it feels like he's meeting an old friend makes this whole entire fight so utterly ridiculous. 

_What the hell are we doing? What is all of this? How am I supposed to fix it?_

But his train of thought is cut short when slender fingers wrap around his hips. He's being pulled onto the bed, and the handful of water bottles slip onto the mattress and clatter across the floor in a series of miniature thunders. But Hiro isn't paying attention to any of it. All he can think about is how his shirt is being pushed upward and his brother's hands are wrapping around his skin, gripping his muscles with a perfect pressure.  The soft thoughts from before are flung out of his skull like particles in a centrifuge. Hiro's cheek is pulled against a broad chest, its dips and curves so familiar. Tadashi's body temperature is scorching his exposed skin with a kind of fever that doesn’t seem human. Broad arms are enclosing him in a cage of taut muscles and the itch of a cardigan sweater. Hiro's heart is bursting into a state of high alertness, its shallow blips turning into pounding beats that he can feel all the way down to his toes. He's petrified. But his insides are screaming. Everything beneath his skin is revolting. It's chaos, absolute fucking _anarchy_. 

A damp heat is pressing itself against the crown of his head. A mouth. 

Words are tumbling out between foreign teeth, digging themselves into his skull, as if they’re trying to climb into his brain.

"Mmmhh...Hiro...Stop growing up…'S too fast…'M sorry… Sorry…Hiro…Sorry…"

Hiro shivers. There's a blob of pressure building in his throat. It's cutting off his breathing. He's choking. He's suffocating.  He wants to answer. He wants to say so much, but he doesn't know if the words would come out right. He doesn't know if they would make sense the second they’d touch the atmosphere. 

_I'm sorry too. I hate you. I care about you. You make it so hard. Why am I feeling like this? Why am I so confused? What is happening to us?_

But Hiro doesn't say any of it. He stays silent, trying to match his rapid breaths to the rise and fall of his brother's chest. Only now does he notice that he has his fingers firmly twisted into the material of the other boy’s sweater. The strain of his knuckles is tightening with each hot breath that gushes across the expanse of his skull. It feels like he's absorbing the heat, sucking it up like he needs it, like he's starving. 

He doesn't want to let go. He wants his fingers to stay knotted into place. He wants Tadashi flush against him. And there's this tiny little thing nibbling its way into the back of his brain. It's hissing words into the dips and creases, bad words, dangerous words, words a little brother shouldn't be thinking. 

But his heart is stabbing him in the back, slicing him up like some goddamned thanksgiving turkey, and his cheeks are boiling, and the heat in his stomach is being pulled into his blood stream and all the way down to places far, far below. It's wrong. It's so wrong. Hiro tries to shake them off, those horrible thoughts, but they're relentless and hungered, and they're biting into his flesh with razor sharp teeth. It burns. It hurts. Hiro is being eaten alive - and he’s letting it happen. 

He starts scrambling with his feet. The sudden movement is tugging him back into reality. Tadashi is tightening his grip. Hiro's breath hitches when that mouth is migrating down the side of his skull, brushing against his temple, slipping across the shell of his ear and tracing the dip of his jaw. The touch lingers, its graze leaving imprints like trails of a map forming on his skin. He doesn't know what is happening until he realizes that he's staring into a shade of brown so similar to the hue he sees in his own eyes. Hiro's fingers are pulling the sweater closer towards his chest. Tadashi is moving with the tug. Their noses bump. Hot breaths are rolling across his face like tidal waves. They're sharp and sweet, liquor and smoke and the ghosts of words Hiro will never get to hear. The tip of a nose is running along the curves of his features. An arm is loosening its grip around his torso, careful fingers pressing their tips into the side of his bicep. He can feel them quiver against his skin, tiny bolts of voltage warming up the contact. Hiro's eyelids flutter when his chin is being caught between the pressure of a knuckle and the pad of thumb. Tadashi is holding Hiro's head in place, pulling him closer just a fraction, just enough for his heartbeat to thunder so quick it feels like it's trying to turbo-thrust its way out of his chest.  His brother's eyes are growing dark, pupils expanding, smothering ever sputter of brown light in their wake.  

An ocular eclipse. That's all Hiro can see.

And he knows they’re both slipping into very dangerous territory.

His brain is letting lose the sirens. They're howling across his cranium. But they're not loud enough to reach him, not insistent enough to wrench the teeth of those horrible thoughts out of his flesh. They can't make him stop craving it. And it would be so easy to stop. It would be so easy to kick and scream and bawl his way out of his brother's arms. It would be so easy to clamber off of the bed and scramble under his own sheets. It would be so easy to blame it all on his fluctuating hormone levels. 

But Hiro has never liked it easy. Easy isn’t enough of a challenge.  

He doesn't know who moves first, but the next thing his brain manages to register are lips brushing against his own. They're mouths are barely touching, their contact so fleeting it feels like they’re nothing but parts of a distant memory. Tadashi's breath is hot and heavy, urgent in the way it tries to force its way into Hiro's mouth. It comes in little bursts, its flow cut off by words, so many words.

"Hiro. Hirooo…'M sorry, Hiro. I'm sorry, but you jus…hurt s'much. You hurt so much." 

Hiro stops moving, and it feels like the rest of the world follows suit. The whole entire earth stops revolving around its axis, the solar-system stuck in a motionless void that keeps each planet from orbiting the sun itself. And then it's just the two of them. 

Hiro and Tadashi, two brothers clutching at each other in a patch of their very own infinity. 

_You hurt too, Tadashi. You hurt too._

The earth is hurled back into its gravitational pull, time hitting both of them at full speed. Hiro surges forward. 

Their lips meet like a highway collision. 

He swears he can hear the impact blow right through his ears. It sounds like he's trapped in an under tow, the tide dragging him farther into the static that's rummaging through its depths. Tadashi's lips are flush and soft but so hard in their demands. The hand curled around his chin is hastily slipping back around, palm pushing into his spine, fingers pressing against the knobs. It feels like he’s being touched by tethered electric wires. They’re lips are slotting against each other, slick tongues constantly shifting. It’s messy and brutal, and there’s nothing careful about any of it. Their demons are running wild, colliding in the little space between their skin. Hiro's fingers are knotted into Tadashi's hair, urging him closer, holding on for dear life. He's panting against his mouth, letting the sounds drip onto the foreign tongue. It's wet, and it's slick, and it's so perfectly chaotic. It feels like he's drowning, suffocating, skin turning violet and blue. He doesn't want air. He doesn't need it. 

Hiro catches his brother's bottom lip with a groan, and he leans into the desperate touches of those big hands. They’re roaming over the expanse of his back, as if they’re trying to reach every single inch of his existence. A familiar heat is pooling in between his legs, and it's growing with each clank of their teeth and skid of their tongues. His hips snap forward. The sudden burst of friction makes his mouth open wider. He’s not in control anymore. His body is reacting on impulse, limbs moving on their own accord. There’s a low groan clashing into the whimper that is climbing out of his own throat. Hiro’s rutting against the other boy, the pressure in his pants aligning with something hard and throbbing.

Hiro grabs Tadashi by the shoulders, pressing his body forward with all his might. He doesn't know how he manages to pin his older brother into the comforter. But he's above him, legs clamping around his torso, holding him in place. 

And Tadashi lets him. He lets Hiro fist his hair and tug at his sweater and kiss him until neither of them can catch their breath. 

He lets him. 

_Because he's drunk._

_Because he's out of it._

_You aren't, Hiro._

_You aren't._

_Stop._

_He's your brother._

_I don't care._

_I don't fucking care._

And it's that sudden realization that rips him away. He scrambles backwards, hands and feet pushing him off of the bed, off of Tadashi. 

He lands on the hard floor, spine pressed against the partition. He curses, and it's loud enough to make his brother hoist himself upwards. 

Tadashi is staring at him, and Hiro is staring right back, and It feels like there's a large crack coursing through the vast space between them, growing and growing until it's a canyon. 

His brother's eyes look dazed, the darkness still caught in that deep hue. His lips are swollen, the skin around it flushed. A ruddy blush is leaking into his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. The sight of it reminds Hiro of that time they went to a strawberry farm when they were kids. Tadashi had picked so many strawberries his basket had been overflowing, and he'd mushed his face into it, eating them all in one go. His mouth had been glistening ruby red, and his chubby cheeks had been smudged with sticky sweet crimson. There had been this gigantic smile tearing through the bottom of his face. He’d looked like the happiest child alive. 

The thought of it hurts. It's a childhood memory. _Their_ childhood, this little blip in time where their lives were so much easier, bubbly and light - and innocent.  There is nothing innocent about this. This is heavy. This is real. 

A fist is growing out from within the base of his throat, knuckles pressing upward to bawl their out. And Hiro feels like running until he reaches the ends of the earth and hurls himself into the pits of oblivion. He feels like screaming until his voice gives up and his throat is nothing but soar flesh and torn muscle. 

But he doesn't do any of that. He just keeps on staring at Tadashi until the solution of that equation has been checked, tripple-checked, reevaluated from front to back, and back to front. 

It's there, the final answer. It's hanging high above their heads, smack-dab in the middle of that empty canyon. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drunk!Tadashi is sunshine and cotton candy. Can someone please write a 10k POV Drunk!Tadashi fic? :3 I bet he'd belt out Rick Astley songs and confess his undying love to inanimate objects! The thought of it makes me so happy *sobs*  
> Also, trying to write realistic fictional incest is so frustrating *sobs even more* They're going to be neighbors in the next fic. Swear to god, it's going to be pure fluff! (*ˊૢᵕˋૢ*)  
> Okidoki! Next chapter might take a while. I'm moving to Germany, and there's going to be a lot going on. But I'll try to write as fast as I can, I promise!


	3. Pretty Bad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it said 3 chapters...but...yeah...there's one more coming up :D  
> 

His legs are two steps away from giving up, but he’s pushing himself past the barrier. Hiro is running.  His lungs are an agonizing burn beneath his ribs, a fireball blazing against his chest. He won't stop because it feels like he’ll crash, like his heart will drop dead if his feet stop moving. And so he keeps on going until his heels begin to bleed into the rubber of his sneakers. He runs through it. He’s running through the pain and the absence of oxygen, bashing against the wind and the rain. He’s a zooming shadow, vision a collective spectrum of flashing lights and wet concrete. The world is turning, and it feels like the busy city streets are moving with him, dragging him along for the ride. The top of his hoodie has long been torn from his head, and his fringe is clinging to his skin in sticky tendrils. It’s cold, so cold. He shudders through it, his feet switching from left to right faster and faster. His stomach is burning. He feels like throwing up. 

_Keep going. Just keep going._

_Going where? Where the fuck am I going?_

Hiro’s gotten better at running. He has routes that he’s gotten better at sticking to, systems he knows inside out. But it’s different now. The past few runs have been dominated by a kind of insecurity that reminds him of the first week he’d joined the track team. He hadn’t known where to go. He had been inexperienced and cocky, and Tadashi had had to pick him up so often it had been on the verge of embarrassing. 

But Tadashi hasn’t been picking him up. 

The thought of his older brother makes Hiro’s feet twitch. He shakes his head. The movement is so fast it hurts, but he does it again and again, until it feels like he’s having a seizure. 

_You kissed your brother. Your brother kissed you back._

Hiro bites his tongue. He can’t feel the pain anymore. He’s reached that state of running where he’s numbed, where all he can feel is the ground beneath his feet, that rapid _thump, thump, thump_ that keeps him tethered to reality. But other than that, nothing else exists - because nothing else matters.

_Your brother was drunk. You weren’t drunk. You were tired._

The sounds around him are morphing into dull static. 

Voices. Honks. Music throwing itself through a concrete maze. Feet bashing through puddles. Buzzes of trams. Fizzes of electric wires. Heavy breaths. Sneakers pounding. 

_You weren’t that tired. You weren’t tired at all._

Hiro ups his pace. Bad decision. He can’t breathe. He hasn’t been breathing for days. 

_You were wide awake. You knew exactly what your were doing._

The neon signs of San Fransokyo Square are etching their flares into his eyes, glowing tattoos swimming through the ocular haze he’s lost himself in. He weaves himself through the crowd. He's been getting bad at it. It’s as if mind won’t acknowledge the fact that his limbs are growing. He used to be so good at slipping through the cracks and creases of the world, but he’s older now, bigger, taller. Sometimes he wishes he could just shrink back; maybe all the way back to a time where he was miniscule. 

Childhood. 

He’s almost an adult now. Being an adult makes you realize things you wish you’d never realized. 

_You liked it._

Hiro can hear the caws of seagulls. He knows where his feet are trying to take him. The pressure in his legs is building. It hurts. All of this hurts. 

_You really liked it. You liked what he was doing to you._

Hiro shoulders past the crowds of commuters rushing back home. He doesn’t want to think about home. Home is different now. Home isn’t home. Home is chaos. Home is Tadashi.

_You loved it._

He crashes against the railing of the docks, fingers curling themselves into the flaking metal. He’s screaming. He doesn’t know what he’s screaming at, but he’s screaming, and every inch of him is revolting, urging him to scream louder. His voice is clashing into the wind, wild and savage and not his own. He knows people are watching, onlookers stopping in their tracks to stare at the mess that’s curled around the bars. And he wants to run up to every single one of them and just say it, just scream, "Everything! Everything is so fucked up!".

The ocean is staring back at him, dark and savage, surface distorted by millions of rain drops. Hiro wants to hurl himself into the waves. He wants to let them drag him down to the depths where he can just get it over with, where he can put an end to this chaos. He knows he can’t do that. Nothing in the world can be that easy. 

The railing isn’t the only thing holding him back. 

✖︎

Hiro inches away from the door leading to the garage.A slice of light is cutting through the gaps. Little clanks and tinkers are forcing their sounds into the darkened hallway. Tadashi is still working. It’s not unusual. It just seems excessive with each day that passes. He’s been eating less. He’d rather stay cooped up in the garage and in the lab than come out to eat. But that’s how Tadashi handles things, how he’s always handled things. 

Internally. 

While Hiro races through the city streets and sneaks out to bot fights, Tadashi stays locked inside a room and fixes defaults in chips. He never creates when he’s angry. He mends. 

Hiro leans his forehead against the door and closes his eyes. It’s cold now. His clothes are still damp from the rain. He’s shivering, but he doesn’t care. The sounds of curses are being hissed into the silence. Hiro is left to wonder what’s going on inside of there - what’s going on inside of Tadashi. He’s always left wondering when it comes to his brother, ever since they were little. Tadashi covers it all up with those stupid smiles and those stupid hugs and "No, it’s okay. Now, what do you need?". He always makes sure others are being taken care of first. Hiro wonders if there had ever been a time where Tadashi had put his own feelings above everybody else’s. Because everybody feels something. Everybody has a world beneath their skin, a place so different from the one they show you. 

Anger. Sadness. Desperation.

Hiro lets it out. He’ll rip it out of his chest, wrench it out of his marrow and drain it out of his system. Tadashi won’t do that. He's careful. He's this sensitive thing folded in on itself, so tender when it looks at the world and everything surrounding it.  Hiro knows people like him. Hiro knows Tadashi. To Tadahsi, a pinch is a blow to the fucking gut. And sometimes Hiro will picture what his brother looks like on the inside. It’s always the same image: A clogged faucet that won’t let any water through, pressure building, spout droning. But it’s broken, and it won’t let it out. There’s so much tension bawling inside of those pipes, pressure waiting to be set free and explode.

Hiro scrunches his eyes until the world behind his lids is fizzing. He starts thinking about angry strangers and leaking faucets - images of violent eyes and the echo of a strained voice that has never been anything other than kind and compassionate.  Tadashi is trying so hard to erase the past few weeks. He’s trying to be his brother again, but he can't do that if the word has lost its meaning. Whatever they are, they’re not brothers anymore. Brothers don’t clutch at each other in a kind of way that makes it feel like they need it - like breathing. 

Hiro shouldn’t be running until his feet start bleeding. Tadashi shouldn’t be mending bots that are so damaged they make him throw screwdrivers against the walls. 

After he hears a frustrated groan fight its way through the door, he slips up the attic stairs. He doesn’t realize that he’s been pressing a hand against his right side until he crashes onto his comforter. He’s been doing that a lot. His hand will always find its way to the right side of his ribcage. There’s a bruise there, a splattered constellation of violet and blue, the dark imprint of a familiar palm etched into his skin. 

 ✖︎

"Okay. That’s it! Living room, now! We’re playing board games until we drop dead! Baymax! Go get the Monopoly board!" 

Aunt Cass is shouting through the whole entire house, running and bawling around like a hyperactive hurricane. She drags Hiro by the collar of his shirt and forces him to follow her to the living room. 

"But - I - ow!" 

"No _buts_! I’m so done with this. Today is Friday, and we’re having Family Night!" Aunt Cass cuts him off before Hiro even has a chance to fight back. He wants to run. His legs are itching to race off into the city streets and carry him far, far away. But he knows she won’t buy any more of his lies. His coach isn’t forcing the track team to run for two hours every single night. That’s insane. Aunt Cass knows that’s insane, which is why she’s finished with even pretending to believe him. Sometimes Hiro thinks she knows that there’s something more than just a fight between her nephews. He wonders what she’d think of them if she knew about that night those many days ago. He wonders if she’d be angry, or ashamed, or disgusted. He wonders if she’d want to stop having Family Nights. 

Tadashi shuffles out of the garage. He looks tired with those bruises beneath his eyes. He doesn’t have his cap on today. Hiro wishes he did. 

They don’t look at each other. Not really. Tadashi gives him a small smile, but it looks so forced, as if it’s taking him every ounce of his energy to tug the corners of his mouth upward. Hiro doesn’t smile back as he lets himself plop onto the couch, trying hard not to smash his face into the nearest pillow. He’s not in the mood for Family Night. He’s not the in the mood for anything. Honestly, Baymax seems to be the only one in the room bursting with excitement. Then again, Baymax is excited about the sounds the dishwasher makes. 

The bot is squashed in front of the coffee table. His puffed up hands are arranging and rearranging the Monopoly board, as if he’s trying to figure out what angle is absolutely perfect. Tadashi has his eyes strained against the rushed movements. Hiro wants his brother to look at him. He wants him to stare at him until he tears up and his skin starts to hum. But he doesn’t know if he’s ready to find out what’s inside of those eyes. 

What if it’s horrible? What if it’s devastating? What if it’s the exact same thing he’d seen when he’d pressed him down into the comforter and snapped his hips against his -

Hiro crunches his eyes closed. There’s a far too familiar heat seeping into his abdomen, savage in the way it’s trying to fight its way up his lungs and through his throat and straight out of his mouth. Now is not the time to think about that. Now is not the time for anything.  

"Come on, guys!" Aunt Cass moans from where she is leaning against Baymax, cross-legged and hands pressed against her sides. She looks like she’s about to burst out into a lecture. She’s bad at lecturing. 

"At least pretend like you’re glad to be here." 

She gives them both a heated glare. Hiro tries his best not to flinch. Tadashi lets himself fall into the free space next to him. Their knees bump. Electric currents. Hiro scrambles away, spine pressing itself against the cushions at the far end of the tiny couch. Aunt Cass narrows her eyes, and it feels like she’s trying to stare straight into his skull.

"If you don’t play nice, I’m going to force you to wear your Get-Along-Shirt. I don’t care how bad it is," she warns, her hands curled into fists that she presses even harder against her ribs. Hiro folds his arms in front of his chest. He internally groans at the thought of the stretched out Get-Along-Shirt hidden inside of aunt Cass’ bedroom cabinet, somewhere squeezed behind family photo albums and the trophy of that "Hotdog Eating Contest" she’d won a trillion years ago. Of all things, that is the exact opposite of what they need. The thought of having his brother pressed against him is making that heat in his stomach fire up like a gargantuan thunder bolt. And maybe the worst part about all of this is that even though physical contact is the number thing they don’t need, Hiro can’t help but want it, really, really want it. It’s his own body. It’s craving things it shouldn’t crave. It’s bad. It’s not right. It’s the hormones. It must be the hormones. Teenagers have fucked up needs. They’re horny. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.  That’s all he can afford to accept. 

Hiro looks over at his brother. His hair looks a mess, and he can’t help but remember how those dark strands had felt like twisted around his knuckles. He wishes he had never let go. 

The game starts. Hiro isn’t paying attention. He knows Tadashi isn’t putting much effort into acting involved either. Aunt Cass ends up in jail more often than needed, Baymax starts stacking houses on every single lot, Mochi is trying to eat the houses, and Hiro can’t keep his eyes off of Tadashi’s fingers. They’re so slender, insistent when they try to pluck the houses out of the cat’s mouth, nimble when they let the dice slip between their knuckles. The bruise on Hiro’s left side is pulsating. His brain is hurling himself into a spiral of memories, bad memories. It’s getting too hot, too fast. He remembers a throbbing heat sliding against the pressure between his legs. He remembers smooth fingers wrapping themselves around his waist and fingernails cutting through the knobs of his spine. He remembers fists of hair and slick tongues and feral groans and - 

Hiro tugs a pillow onto his lap. He feels like throwing up. 

Tadashi shoots him a worried look. His eyebrows are tugging themselves into the middle of his face. His eyes are so wonderfully dark, all violent and deep, deeper than the hole that is forming in the middle of Hiro’s chest. 

It’s the sea storm. It’s still there, and it’s leaking out of his brother’s sockets and hurling itself into the air. Hiro can feel it howling all around them, trapping them in this cold wet chaos. He can’t find his way out. He needs to. He’s drowning. 

Hiro runs to the toilet. He keeps his hand pressed against his right side. The bruise is throbbing like it’s screaming for every ounce of his attention. He has his head bent over the toilet bowl. He chokes. Nothing comes out. 

 ✖︎ 

Hiro is sitting at the kitchen table. Tadashi is sitting right in front of him. They’re eating breakfast, but it feels like they’re fighting a silent war, their thoughts bawling and clawing at each other between the coasters. They’re roaring, crashing against the milk carton and hitting their bloody mouths into the murky puddles. It’s anger and desperation and something else, something so large Hiro can’t wrap his head around it. He feels like breaking the silence. He wants to say so many things. He wants to scream it all into his brother’s face until he’s mute. 

_You felt it too. Don’t lie to me. You liked it. Tell me you liked it too. Please, tell me you liked it too. Why are we doing this? What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we just have it? Why can’t we just let it happen? I hate you so fucking much. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate myself. I hate everything. I hate this._

He wants Tadashi to react. He wants him to stand up so fast his chair clatters onto the floor. He wants them to pounce onto the table and fight, raw and violent. 

No afterthoughts. No mercy. 

Hiro can’t help but stare at Tadashi’s hands, something he’s been doing far too often the past few days. He can’t keep his eyes away from them. They’re always so strained, so tense, knuckles pale, fingers stiff. One of those hands is curled tightly around the edge of the table; the other is gripping the spoon so hard his wrist is trembling. Hiro wants to feel them. He doesn’t care how. 

A graze, a caress, a flick, a pinch, a punch - an iron grip around his throat. 

Hiro doesn’t care. He just wants Tadashi to touch him. But the canyon won't stop growing, and it’s so frustrating because his brother is right there, inches away, close enough to reach without having to strain a fucking muscle. 

But Tadashi stays silent and so does Hiro. 

Aunt Cass has officially given up. She’s letting them fend for themselves. Hiro is still debating wether that is a good or a bad thing. They don’t fight anymore. Maybe _that’s_ a good thing. Hiro hasn’t seen his brother snap in so long that sometimes he feels like he has forgotten what it sounds like. Maybe he even misses it. Maybe he misses everything. Maybe he misses the tremble in his voice when he’s infuriated or that deep tone that manages to rip his abdomen apart. And maybe he misses that gentle quirk to Tadashi's words when he knows that his brother is smiling without having to look. Maybe he misses that too. 

But Hiro doesn’t want his brother back. He wants _Tadashi._ He doesn’t want a brother.  There is only one way you get to love your brother. Only one. 

And maybe there’s this bizarre fantasy in his head where the feelings he has should feel right. But they don’t feel right. It’s not about anything being _right_. That’s not what this is. This is unhealthy and awful, and it’s ripping them apart into a million minuscule pieces. It’s bad. It’s so bad, and Hiro wants it. He’s willing to go against the tow, to fight off everything that’s keeping that canyon between them a million feet wide and a trillion feet deep. He’s willing to do something bad, to _be_ bad. But Tadashi won’t because that’s not who Tadashi is. The fact that Hiro doesn’t give a single shit about his brother’s feelings in all of this, is not even making him feel guilty. This is what Hiro does. He takes his brother for granted. He does stupid things without giving a crap about the consequences. He’s the foolish one, the impulsive little child that always needs to have its way. Maybe because he’s always known that Tadashi would be there to keep him in line, to catch him when he fell, to kick him in the ass when he wouldn’t budge. But there’s no Tadashi now. There’s nobody who can help Hiro. 

He wonders if this is what anarchy feels like. 

✖︎

Hiro slams the door behind him, and he presses his back against it with all his might. Nobody is leaving the freaking laundry room until something happens. 

Tadashi turns around. The laundry basket slips out of his fingers, plastic clanking against the floor. The innards are spilling out onto the tiles. His brother is staring at him with a kind of look that makes it feel like he’s watching the world end. In a way it feels like it, like the earth is crumbling beneath their feet, so ready to give out and fling them down a landslide. 

"We need to talk," Hiro presses out, and he watches as the words tremble through the air, so anxious in the way they try to run and hide. So much for wanting to have the upper hand. _Hiro’s_ the one pressed against the door. _Hiro’s_ the one who could keep them locked in here forever. 

_Then why doesn’t it feel like that?_

Tadashi snaps his eyes towards the clothing crumpled across the floor. He doesn’t move, doesn’t nod, doesn’t answer, doesn’t do anything that would be a clear indicator of him having heard Hiro’s words.  

"Tadashi."

It’s barely a whisper, so silent that it takes him aback when his brother reacts. He looks up. He’s blank. 

"We - " Hiro gulps. "Need to - This whole thing…" 

He lets his fingers crawl towards the back of his head, and he tugs at the elastic band that has held his hair up for the past few hours of pacing and over-thinking and consistent self-loathing. His fringe falls into his eyes. It feels better like that. The strands are hiding his face. He doesn’t want his brother to see him. Hiro opens his mouth, wanting to try again, but his head is wiped clean, and there's nothing left but this giant expanse of infinite nothing. There had been so much on his mind the past few days, thoughts that had kept him up each and every night. But now he can’t find them. It’s all gone, as if someone decided to cut his skull open and scoop it all out. Now all Hiro manages to do is breathe and stare -  and he just won’t have it anymore. He wants to give up and put an end to all of this. He wants to fall to his knees and never get back up again.  

Hiro stumbles forward. He curls his arms around Tadashi’s neck, and the impact makes his head spin. They shuffle backwards, legs tangled, lungs smothered. Hiro buries his face into the crook of his brother’s neck. Warm skin and itchy cardigan material. He smells lemon shampoo and musk, and it’s so wonderfully familiar that Hiro can’t help but clutch at Tadashi just a little tighter. His brother is a frozen bundle of limbs in front of him. He’s not moving, not even breathing, and all Hiro can feel is this sledgehammer pounding against the beats in his own chest. They stay like that, Hiro clutching at Tadashi until their beats have harmonized. 

Hiro’s hands loosen their grip from the sweater tangled between his fingers, and he lets his palms slide further upwards. He digs his nails into the flesh of Tadashi’s neck, pressure just enough to create a drone in his fingertips. The skin is damp there, sweat pooling. Hiro lets his nose wander along juncture of his shoulder and neck. He’s breathing heavy, hot air hitting the pale skin in waves. His brother’s muscles start twitching, and he can feel the touch of familiar fingers burning themselves into his shoulder blades. His lips are pressing against the muscles of Tadashi’s neck, the skin a smooth layer of warmth stretching over firm tension. He can feel it, the way his brother’s muscles are trembling against his mouth. It’s like Hiro has him strung around his very own fingertips. It’s good. It’s so good. 

Hiro’s lips slip across the warm flesh, tonging at the musk and salty aftertaste. He’s mouthing his way up the expanse of flushed skin. It’s like he’s caught in a haze, the world veiled in a thick web of tar. He can’t hear anything, can’t see anything. It’s all black and white noise and those tribal beats drumming against their chests. 

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Heat. Suffocation. Silent Confessions. 

Hiro twists his fingers into the hairs at the nape of his brother's neck. He’s yanking his head back, kisses becoming sloppy, urgent. It’s as if he’s trying to force the taste of him onto the pad of his tongue like he needs to remember him for days, weeks, months - years. Tadashi is just holding on. His slender fingers are digging holes into his bones. They’re so close, so terribly close that Hiro can feel every single breath hitch in the throat he’s latched himself onto. It’s like his brother is drowning, breaths irregular, lungs broken. Hiro’s right there with him, suffocating at his side.

And while they’re both caught in their very own natural disaster, Hiro feels like there’s another storm tearing him up inside, and the catastrophe beneath his skin is so much worse. 

What he’s doing is selfish, Hiro knows that. He’s being impulsive. He’s being so fucking stupid. He has his brother cornered, pushed up against the washing machine. He wants Tadashi to shove him away and cram him against the door and kiss him until his brain is turned upside down. He's is trying to wind him up, mouthing at his throat, as if that could build up the anger fast enough. He doesn’t care anymore. He wants this.He wants this so bad. And if Tadashi would just give him a fucking answer, then he’d know if he wants this just as bad as Hiro does. 

_You’re being so fucking selfish!_

Tadashi isn’t selfish. Tadashi is kind and smart, and he smiles like he’s giving you the whole entire world with the twitch of his facial muscles. His brother deserves so much more than selfishness. He deserves so much more than this. 

Hiro lets go. He backs off. He races out of the laundry room, and he can feel that storm trying to rip him back with its heavy wind and its murderous tides. But Hiro escapes it.  His name is being flung into the air. It’s loud, almost a shout. He knows it’s Tadashi’s voice, the way it seems to be forced out of the pits of his stomach, all low and urgent. Hiro tries to pry the heat out of his abdomen, but the more he tries to get rid of it, the stronger it burns, as if his half-assed attempts at liberation are fueling it with gasoline.  Hiro locks himself in the bathroom. He crashes his spine against the back of the door. His legs give up. He slides onto the tiles. The back of his head is slammed against the wood. The impact scissors its way through his headspace. It hurts, and so he does it again and again, until the pain almost overtrumps the agony ripping his stomach apart. 

"Hiro, please! Open the door. Look, I - This needs to stop!" 

Hiro shakes his head. He can hear his thick hair grinding against the surface. The prickles sound like firecrackers going off right inside of his ear canals. Everything is too loud, too bright. He pinches his eyes closed. 

"We - You need to let this go. Please, Hiro."

It’s a whisper. Hiro has never heard anyone say his name like that. Desperate. Sad. Aching. The way his brother says his name reminds him of the way people look at stray kittens, all beaten and hungered. They just stare, and then they leave, and they forget all about the ruffed up ball of fur pressed against the alleyway dumpster. They feel sorry for it. That’s it.

_That’s it._

He doesn’t want his brother to feel sorry for him. He knows he’s stupid and messed up. He is aware of the fact that he likes someone he shouldn’t like, someone he can’t like. It’s embarrassing. 

Hiro fists his hair, palms grinding against his forehead. He hears a weight shifting against the other side of the door, clothes sliding against wood, body plopping onto floor boards. He can feel his brother’s flesh burning against his own. They stay like that, back to back, spines separated by a one and a half inch bathroom door. 

They’re not ready to talk. They’re not ready for anything.  

✖︎

Hiro arrives at SFIT a little too late. It’s been a constant reoccurrence the past few weeks. Maybe he even does it on purpose, leaving the house just a few minutes too late so he misses the tram, and the only option left is to run like his life is on the line. It feels good. It makes his heart pump and his lungs stutter. He likes the way it reminds him of that feeling he’d gotten when slender fingers had pressed their nails into his shoulder blades. 

Running for his life is the closest thing to it. 

Hiro skids to a stop once he slips through the open doors of the lab. Tadashi’s already there. Of course he is. 

"Hiro! Say hello to the exchange students. This is Kye, and that over there’s Enzo." 

Honey Lemon is stretching both of her arms out towards two figures standing at the back of the main lab. A gigantic grin is lighting up her flushed face. Hiro wonders how someone is capable of being so enthusiastic on aMonday morning. But he appreciates it. Honey Lemon’s smiles are the good kind, the infectious kind, the so-goofy-you-can’t-help-but-giggle-like-a-little-school-girl kind. Hiro smiles. It feels out of place. His facial muscles are having trouble accommodating, and he wonders how long he’s gone without smiling. 

Hiro likes the exchange students. They’re smart. It’s fun working with people who know what they’re doing. And Hiro feels like his ideas are finally flowing, like he’s broken through some mental barricade that has capped his productivity for far too long. All he’s been doing is _running_. He doesn’t know how long he’s gone without building a single freaking bot. Maybe it’s because when you work with people you don’t know, they don’t ask you "What’s wrong, Hiro?", "What’s going on with you guys?", "We’re your friends. We worry.". With strangers it’s just "Could you hand me the screwdriver, please?". 

Kye is the more talkative of the two. She’s loud, and everything she lets slip past her red painted lips sounds a little too vulgar. She’s the kind of person who will cut the crappy small talk and go straight for the juicy bits. Hiro likes that about her, this I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude that reminds him so much of Gogo. Her narrow features are entrapped by bleached blonde hair, thinned out and damaged from too many years of hair dye. She’s pretty but in a disruptive in a way. 

"Enzo, get your lazy ass up, and help us out here!" Kye says, her coal-lined eyes narrowing. She looks like a cat. Hiro averts his eyes back to the number pad of the 3D printer. 

"Who pissed into your Cherrios today, milady," Enzo asks from where he’s sitting on the floor, cross legged and grinning like a kid on Christmas. Straight teeth. Bleached. He’s been grinning a lot, maybe a little too much. Enzo’s brilliant grins are accompanied by these dimples that make it hard for anyone not to appreciate his face. His warm complexion just adds to his pleasant appearance. He looks like the kind of person who should live the rest of his days in a place with sandy beaches and endless sunsets. 

"Fuck you, Enzo."

Kye lets out a theatrical huff. She’s leaning against the printer, and her fire-truck-red lips are puckered in a way that seems oddly familiar. The two exchange students start bantering like children, almost like siblings. It’s the way they’re teasing each other, flinging scrunched up paper at each other’s foreheads without a care in the world. Hiro’s stomach starts stinging. He remembers when Tadashi and him used to be so - _happy_. He remembers a time where being together was something so natural that they never really gave it a second thought. It was so easy. It’s not easy anymore. It’s like they don’t know each other. They’re two strangers living in the same house. 

"Cheer up, buttercup!" 

Honey Lemon is squishing a finger into Hiro’s cheek. She settles herself next to Enzo, spidery legs crossed at the ankles. 

"Does he always look like he’s about to murder somebody?" Kye asks, pointing a finger at Hiro without even giving him a second glance. He bites his tongue. He hadn’t even realized he’d been scowling. 

How bad does it have to get for you to not even notice what your face is doing?

Honey Lemon cocks her head to the side. The arches of her perfectly plucked eyebrows start to break and distort, sticky-pink lips drooping into a pout. Hiro thinks she looks like a puppy. Honey Lemon doesn’t answer, leaving Kye to her own conclusions. Hiro doesn’t want to look at the other end of the lab, he really doesn’t, but his eyes just won’t listen to his brain, and before he knows it, his pupils are stapled to broad shoulders and the back of a baseball cap. Tadashi is hunched over his work desk, fingers fumbling around with some sort of metal cube. Hiro wonders if the scowl on his brother’s face is similar to his own.

Probably. Most probably.

"You should smile more," a bright voice says. Enzo’s grins are audible.

Hiro looks at the boy sitting on the metal floor. He’s beaming this mega watt smile that shines so bright Hiro’s eyes start to burn. If Hiro had those kind of teeth, he’d probably do the exact same thing - smile until his facial muscles wouldn’t be capable of doing anything else. 

"Looks good on you," Enzo says, leaning back onto his toned arms. Everything about him is chiseled, as if he was carved straight out of granite. Except for his nose. It’s small and dipped like a child’s. Hiro doesn’t think someone with smiles so bright should be in the position to say something like that. Maybe it’s because it sounds rehearsed, as if Enzo has repeated that sentence too often for his tongue to ever form it in any other way. He’s smiling. He’s flirting. 

Hiro looks at the hunched figure at the back of the main lab. His stomach starts screaming. 

"Says you," Hiro says - and he immediately wants to bang his forehead into a wall. Kye snorts, rolling her eyes as Honey Lemon suppresses a giggle. Hiro can’t flirt for shit. But he likes the way Enzo is giving him those smiles, as if he’s gracing him with the sun itself. He's so sure of himself, looking up at Hiro like he knows he hit some sort of bull’s eye. Hiro likes this feeling of someone making his cheeks flush. It’s an innocent warmth, nothing compared to the usual wild fire searing through his intestines. Innocent warmth is something he can deal with. It’s a nice distraction. 

Tadashi turns in his chair. He's staring at Hiro like he’s trying to set fire to his skull. It reminds him of the way he had looked at him after he’d chased David out of the house. 

_David_. 

That feels like forever ago. There's an ounce of regret accompanying the memories. What he had with David is nothing compared to this. This is a pandemonium, a freaking disease clinging to his marrow. What he had with David was safe. 

Hiro can’t look away, can’t even blink. Tadashi won’t stop staring.It’s like their eyes are tethered, shackled to their very own gravitational pull. 

"You wanna go out for coffee or dinner some time?" 

Hiro snaps his head back into place. Enzo is looking up at him, hazel eyes melting into his warm complexion. The question sounds like a savior, a lifeboat gliding over a turbulent ocean - _safety_. 

Hiro can feel Tadashi’s stare burning the side of his face, heat eating away at his cranium. He’s watching. He’s listening. 

_You need to let this go. Please, Hiro._

Hiro opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.

_Let this go._

"Dinner would be nice," he presses out, fragile words accompanied by a smile he can barely feel on his face. 

Tadashi walks out of the lab. Hiro drags himself onto the lifeboat. 

 ✖︎

Enzo’s teeth are glowing brighter than the neon lights of San Fransokyo. Hiro thinks he belongs up on the billboards that they’re strolling past. It’s a pleasant night, clouds drizzling, streets buzzing, cool breeze playing with the hair of passers-by. Hiro likes the way the damp concrete reflects the lantern lights and the zooming shadows like a second world playing out beneath his soles. 

"This was nice," Hiro breathes into the silence that has settled between the two of them. It’s a comfortable thing that they’ve created. Hiro can see Enzo nod from the corner of his eyes, and he doesn’t have to look at him to know that there’s a super smile tugging at his sculpted lips. The whole entire evening had been filled with mega watt grins and clichés, compliments that would’ve sounded sticky coming from anybody other than Enzo. But Enzo knows how to wrap people around his fingers. He’s a manipulator. Maybe it’s because he’s good with people, because he _knows_ them. 

"Yeah, I had fun," Enzo says, and it sounds too nice, nothing else but a polite reciprocation. The other boy stops in his tracks. Hiro stumbles to a halt, turning his head with scrunched eyebrows.  

"Look, I did - I mean, I had fun." Enzo ruffles a hand through his chestnut curls. It’s the first time all week that Hiro sees the boy do something that doesn’t feel calculated or tactically placed. He’s not smiling anymore. 

"I like you. Like, it’s been fun, Hiro. It’s just, you - " 

The boy gestures a hand towards him. His eyes are strained against Hiro’s jacket, as if the damp clothing article is capable of helping him assemble the words into the correct order. 

"Look, you just didn’t -" 

Hiro is leaning forward, weight on his toes. 

"It didn’t really feel like you actually thought it was _nice_ ," Enzo presses out. 

"What? No, Enzo, I -"

"Hey, it’s okay! I get it. There’s somebody else on your mind. It’s fine, man. You know, I just wish there weren’t." 

Hiro doesn’t know what to say. What the fuck do you say to something like that? He thought he’d been doing fine. He’d smiled when he’d had to. He’d maintained proper eye contact when he’d had to. He’d told jokes when he’d had to - really shitty jokes, but they were pretty fucking solid. Hiro’s getting angry. He’s getting so angry because Enzo is telling him something that he doesn’t want to know, something that is flinging him off of the lifeboat, body crashing into the hungry waves. 

"Whoever it is…You’ve got it pretty bad," Enzo adds with a small chuckle that doesn’t really sound like a chuckle. The other boy’s face looks odd without a smile - pitiful. Hiro doesn’t like it. He hates it. With one breath it feels like the whole entire city is on the verge of an uproar. The sounds are hurling themselves through the neon maze, their volume getting louder and louder. Colors are bursting into blinding flares that are forcing his eyes to spasm. Everything is crashing, the world crumbling onto his shoulders.

Enzo is staring at his feet, and his obvious discomfort is making Hiro uncomfortable. His head is boiling, and his stomach is lost in a red hot blaze. It’s always this fucking _heat_. 

_You’ve got it pretty bad._

_ Bad. Bad. Bad.   _

The words repeat themselves in an endless loop. 

_ Your own brother is fucking ruining you. _

Hiro’s running. His legs are acting upon instinct, feet carrying him faster than lightning. He’s hurling himself into the noise and the lights, away from the shouts of his own name that just don’t sound right. They’re coming from the wrong mouth. Hiro knows he’s fast, knows Enzo won’t be able to catch up with him. It’s that thought that forces him to run just a little faster. He’s morphing into the collective spectrum of San Fransokyo, breathing in the crowded streets and the residue of lantern lights. It feels like this is all there is, that this is all there will ever be. 

_Catastrophe._

Hiro can’t feel his legs anymore. He’s running fast, too fast. He’s shouldering his way through the crowd, shoving shadows aside with a kind of unfamiliar rage. The city streets are pulling him forward as he races with the trams and the honking cars. It’s the first time he can’t feel that ache on the right side of his ribcage. He can’t feel the bruise. It’s fading. He doesn’t know why he’s so angry. 

Bruises fade. That’s what bruises do.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for taking a freaking month to write this! I split the last chapter into two because it was just getting too long. Aaaah this is so frustrating...I make everything so dramatic. I have no idea how I manage to turn every little situation into a freaking apocalypse ಠ_ಠ This was more about how they both deal with their feelings (because I decided to change the tag "light angst" to "angst"...I'm not satan, I swear) and so I couldn't really squeeze any porny porn into it. But chapter 4 will be about dicks! Hurrr....


	4. Lovely Discolorations

Hiro doesn’t know how long he’s been weaving himself in and out of the electric night of San Fransokyo. It feels like an eternity, as if he’s a comet trying to reach the ends of the universe, but the universe is expanding, the end always an inch too far for him to grasp.

"Hiro! Hiro, stop!"

Heat. His stomach is tearing itself apart. There is only one person in entire existence that manages to set him on fire with nothing but the mentioning of his name. 

"Hiro!"

It’s in his head. He’s completely lost it. He’s hearing things. 

"Hiro! Just stop!"

He can’t stop. It’s too late to stop. 

A flash of light zooms around his front, wheels etching their rubber into the pavement with a screech that hurls him back into reality. Red. Moped. _Tadashi_.

Hiro skids to a stop, his feet barely capable of keeping him from crashing into his brother. He’s right there, inches away, helmet strapped on, thunderstorm eyes. 

"What were you thinking? He said you ran onto the street! I thought there was a bug in your tracker! Are you trying to _kill_ yourself?!" 

He’s shouting. Hiro should be flinching. He should be backing away, but his feet are dragging him two steps further. Tadashi’s nostrils are flaring, the tandems in his neck strung tight. All Hiro manages to do is stare and stare and hold his breath. 

So this is it. All he had to do was fling himself into danger to get his brother to finally look at him. Tadashi is right there. Hiro’s stomach is revolting. He’s sick to find a sense of relief in this whole entire fucking disaster. He’s sick. 

"Hiro, answer me! What the hell were you thinking?" Tadashi demands. He’s hunched over the steering wheel, feet barely planted on the ground. He looks like he’s a heartbeat away from driving off, like he’s thinking about leaving again. The thought makes Hiro’s feet twitch forward. He wants to hurl himself a few inches further and just hold Tadashi. He wants to keep him right here. 

" _Hiro_!" 

There it is again. It’s angry. It’s insistent. It’s demolishing his insides. 

"Come on, get on. We’re going home," Tadashi says. It’s defeat. Hiro’s not ready for defeat. 

"No."

The word feels like thunder in his ears and voltage on his tongue. Two letters, and the ground begins to shake. Hiro digs his fingernails into the flesh of his palms, and the pain creates a droning ache that he can feel all the way down to his toes. He can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe. 

"What?" 

"No!" 

It’s a shout. His vocal chords are burning. His brain is being flung into space and hurled right back, whiplash distorting his vision. 

_No. No. No._

Tadashi shifts his sneakers, rubber soles grinding against the cold hard concrete. His eyes look so big, far too big - dark planets nestled into a pale skull. Hiro’s combusting. It’s happening. He’s ready to launch through the atmosphere and tear every single molecule apart. 

Tadashi’s left foot is twitching. 

"Hiro, what are you -"

"No, fuck you! Fuck you, Tadashi! _Fuck you_!" Hiro screams. He doesn’t sound like himself. He sounds like a raging stranger with a flaming skull and a knotted throat. Feral. 

"I can’t do this anymore!" The words are distorted by a whine, a kind of vocal pinch that’s scratching along his spine. Hiro lifts his palms to his head, fingers cracking his skull open. He clamps his teeth together with so much force he can feel the vibrations in his head. He’s caught in his very own earthquake. It’s all collapsing. It’s breaking, bursting, shattering. Everything is tumbling to the ground. Now it’s just rubble and dust. Never has chaos been so familiar. 

"How are we still - I mean, how long do you want to do this? It’s like we don’t know each other anymore. When the hell did we start - _hating_ each other like this?" 

Hiro’s grip tightens, his fingers tugging at his hair until he flinches. He doesn’t want to look up. All he can do is stare at the ground and picture his brother’s eyes. 

Two oceans caught in a turbulence, waves roaring, wind slicing.  

"Hiro, please, I’m not in the -"

"What? You - You’re what! Not in - in the mood?" His voice gives up mid-sentence, brain stumbling over the words in a stuttering tempo. "Not in the mood to fucking talk about this? It’s been weeks! It’s been months! I’m done, okay? I give up! I’m so fucking done!" 

It feels like his throat is bursting with tension. His lungs are wheezing, trying to cling to the air that keeps escaping them. 

"I hate this," he says, and he can feel this prickling pain near the corner of his eyes. "Because I -" Hiro wheezes as he tries to bring some sort of order to the chaos inside of his skull. He knows what he wants to say, has known for a very long time now. But it never sounds right when he lets the words spiral around in his head, or breathes them into the dead of the night, or screams them at his reflection after he takes a shower so hot his skin is fever-red.

"I - I really want this," he says. The words don’t really sound like words. He holds his breath. He doesn’t dare take a gulp of air, not now, not when the chaos in his head is spilling all over the pavement for the rest of the world to witness. It’s all there. It’s all right there. 

Hiro looks up, peeking through a cage of fingers. He can’t see Tadashi’s eyes, but his hands are clenched fists, and his chest isn’t moving, and he doesn’t look _real_. He looks like a sculpture, this chiseled piece of rock standing in the wake of the city lights and the coastal wind. Motionless. Rigid. 

"Please, don’t say that," Tadashi breathes. His brother is looking at him now, eyes visible and full, and they don’t look the way they should. They don’t look right, the way they remind Hiro of endless pits and that sensation you get when you’re falling without knowing when you’ll hit the bottom.

"Why? Because you’re - Because - "

"Because we can’t!"

Tadashi rips the helmet from his head, his hair a disaster. It looks like he’s been trying to rip out bundles by the roots. His slender fingers are wrapped around the shiny surface of his helmet. Hiro is afraid it will crack. 

"What would they think?" 

And there it is, the most hateful sentence in the whole entire goddamned universe. 

_They. Them. Everybody else but you._

Because of course that would be the first thing his brother would say. To Tadashi, it’s always been about everybody else. It’s always everybody else. It’s never him. 

"When did this become about them? It’s not about them! They don’t matter! Why would you even -"

"Because I care! Because that’s… I care about you, Hiro. That’s what I do! That’s what I’ve always done, and that will never change! Never! I’m your big -"

"Don’t you dare say it! Don’t you fucking say it!" Hiro screams so loud it feels like his eyeballs are being plunged out of his face. He’s vibrating. He’s angry. He’s so angry, and he’s staring at Tadashi, and all he can see are those seven letters twisting and turning around that familiar head like pesky little flies.  

_Brother._

Never has a word hurt so much. 

"What do you want me to say? That it’s all going to be okay? I mean that’s - That’s not the way things work! You know how something like this can’t work!" Tadashi’s voice is getting louder, words turning into knives. Hiro can feel them on his skin like paper cuts. He doesn’t say things like that. 

_This can’t work._

Those words aren’t part of his vocabulary. Now they are. Hiro wonders when everything started to change so fast. The whole entire universe has been turned upside down, and Hiro can’t keep up anymore. He’s completely lost his footing, crawling on his hands an knees. Things like this aren’t supposed to be easy. Things like this aren’t even supposed to happen. But Hiro’s done running away from it. So what if they’re fucked? So what? It’s too late to stop. Because they’re almost there. They’re so close. 

"Who cares about what works and - and - and what doesn’t? Isn’t this supposed to be about - I don’t know - _happiness_?" 

There are things tumbling across Hiro’s lips, things he didn’t even know were in his head. And now that they’re there, Hiro doesn’t even know how to understand them. He wants to take it all back. It’s too personal, too close to the chaos beneath his skin. He’s not ready for that yet - not now, not when he wants to stuff the words back into his throat and swallow them into the pits of his stomach. But it’s too late, and his brother is hurling his helmet onto the pavement. The impact shudders through the sidewalk. People are staring. Hiro can’t see them. 

"Happiness…" Tadashi says with a kind of look that makes Hiro’s eyes burn a little more.  

"Does this make you happy? Does all this -" Tadashi flings his arms around, gesturing towards the flares of the skyscrapers and the concrete beneath their feet. "Does this make you happy, Hiro? Because trust me, this - _this_ is not going to make you happy!" 

Tadashi is lifting himself off of his moped, feet firmly planted onto the sidewalk. He’s right there, an arms length away, but it feels like Hiro will never be able to reach him.

"How the fuck would you know?" he counters, trying hard not screech. But his throat is trying to suffocate him, and everything he says sounds like he’s wringing for air with all his might. 

"It won’t. Trust me. It won’t! And you - Hiro, you deserve to be happy, to be really, really happy. And this isn’t it! This…It just can’t," Tadashi breathes. 

Hiro’s cheeks are wet, tears etching trails into his skin. He wipes them away. His nose is running. He feels so fucking pathetic. He wants to run away. He wants to dig his fingers into his ears and hear absolutely nothing. He doesn’t want to hear Tadashi speak. He doesn’t want to hear those words. They hurt so much.

"Look, this is all because of - After mom and dad died...I mean, it was just us. It’s always been us! Us…You and me…We - we had to trust each other in ways that other siblings don’t, and our situation has always been emotionally heightened. I mean, through the years, there must’ve been some sort of trigger and -"

"Fuck you! Fuck you!" Hiro shouts, and his voice is losing its impact. It’s like he’s gasping through the words, air fighting its way into the spaces between the syllables. "You’re trying to pin this down on some psychological bullshit?"

Hiro laughs. It’s not the time for laughter. It sounds desperate and manic, as if he’s tipping over the edge of a mental breakdown. 

"This _is_ some psychological bullshit, Hiro! It’s not real! It’s - If mom and dad were still here, this would’ve never happened!" Tadashi shouts, and his voice is louder than the roaring car engines and the buzz of the trams and the heart in Hiro’s chest. Tadashi has a hand twisted into his hair. He’s pulling at it, tugging so hard the roots are tearing at the skin of his forehead. He looks so distorted, eyebrows scrunched, lips twitching, cheeks splurging with red. It looks like he’s crying out without actually doing so, like he’s screaming his throat raw with his mouth clamped tight. 

"And I’m the responsible one. I’m your _brother_!" Tadashi’s eyes are nailed against the pavement, pupils flicking from here to there, attention strained onto things that Hiro can’t see - because Hiro’s not looking at the ground. He’s looking at Tadashi - his brother. And he knows he shouldn’t be looking at him like this, like he’s the most important human being in the whole entire universe but also the worst, the most terrible thing that has ever happened to him.

"Not anymore," Hiro says, and for the first time in weeks it sounds right, as if it’s the truth, his very own truth. "Brothers don’t hurt each other like this." 

Tadashi lifts his head, and Hiro watches as the anger crumbles.

"Stop. Stop, don’t - "

"No, don’t you dare tell me that it’s not the same for you. Please, you…Please tell me that this isn’t just me. Because I -" Hiro needs to catch his breath. He coughs. He tries to continue, but his voice won’t work, and his tongue is dry, and he wants to say so much more. "I know this isn’t just me!"  

"I’m sorry, Hiro."

Tadashi says his name like he’s on a lilo out at sea. Drifting. Leaving. 

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Do you seriously think this is all just going to go away with an apology? It’s too late for that! It’s too late to stop. Because now it’s happening, and now I - I fucking want this, and now you’re apologizing? I don’t get you. I don’t - I don’t get this!" The words are gushing, tumbling out of his mouth because it’s painful to keep them in. Hiro needs to get rid of them. It’s getting crowded inside of his headspace. There’s no more room. He can’t breathe. They won’t let him breathe. 

"I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry," Tadashi repeats. 

_Sorry. Sorry. Sorry._  

"Would you just stop putting it all on yourself? Just stop with the whole 'I’m the responsible one' bullshit. It’s us, okay? It’s both of us!" 

_We’re both part of the mess. We’re the reason for the mess. Maybe we are the mess._

Hiro’s feet slide forward, the soles of his shoes dragging stray pebbles with him. The scrapes chase shivers down his spine. Tadashi moves back with each step Hiro takes into his direction.

"I don’t want it to go away," Hiro whispers. It’s surreal hearing his voice like that, so bare to the bone.

"It has to." Tadashi’s hand lets go of his hair. It’s a dark chaos - just like his eyes. His hands flex and clench, but his fingers don’t curl towards his palms. They’re just dangling. Limp. 

"You can’t live like this, Hiro. I just - I don’t want this for you," his brother says, and it’s earnest, and Hiro hates him so much. He shakes his head so hard his neck cracks. But the thoughts aren’t being flung out of his brain, the way he’d hoped they would. They’re still there. They’re so loud.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" Hiro's fingers won't stop twitching. "You didn’t just - Did you seriously just say that? Who the fuck - I wantthis for me! _Me_! Okay, and like - Fine, if this is some psychological bullshit, then fine! I’ll take it! I’ll fucking - "

_Selfish. I’m so selfish - but I’m always selfish. It’s always about me._

"I don’t want this," Tadashi says. 

He’s so close, but Hiro can’t see him. Hiro can’t see anything anymore. There’s just this picture in his head, this foreign image that isn’t part of his memory. It’s not his. Maybe it’s not even real. He doesn’t know why it’s there, why he’s even thinking about such a thing at the worst possible time in the history of all worst possible times.

Two boys are standing in front of two graves in the midst of a tiny ocean of umbrellas and makeshift shelters made out of newspapers. The two kids don’t have umbrellas. They don’t look like they mind the rain. They look like the two loneliest things on earth.

And then the image is changing, and all Hiro can see is a face hiding beneath the bill of a baseball cap. The boy isn’t crying. He doesn’t even look sad. He just looks old, far too old. Children aren’t supposed to look so old. 

✖︎

"Here, you do it." 

Tadashi slides the upgraded chip towards him. 65 hours of work in a rectangular object the size of Hiro’s palm. It’s yellow. Tadashi likes yellow. The color makes Hiro’s eyes burn. 

Hiro fidgets around with the chip, twisting and turning it between his fingers. He watches the way the bright material catches the flares of the lights, slim reflections zooming over its surface with each flick of his wrist. 

It hasn’t been as easy as it had once been, but it has worked - all _this_ \- this thing that they've created. Maybe because Hiro is genuinely trying to make it work. It's been a month, three days and 22 hours. He's still counting the seconds. Sometimes, he gets mixed up with the numbers. He’s tired. They're both so tired. It's like they're trying to play along because the exhaustion is taking up all the space. Pride doesn't fit into crammed spaces. It's claustrophobic. And Hiro's done with the anarchy and the pain and the stupid, stupid fire in his gut. He’s done hating himself - hating _him_. It’s terrifying how comfortable he’d gotten living in chaos. Sometimes, he wonders if this is what recovering drug addicts feel like right before they’re clean. He’s almost there. He can already see the finish line. There’s no more Tadashi after that, just a big brother. And that brother will smile and laugh and hug him, all safe and sound. He won't leave. That’s what big brothers do in the real world. They stay. They don't hurt you. You don't hurt them. 

And of all people, Tadashi Hamada doesn't deserve this much hurt. He deserves a good brother. Hiro will be a good brother. 

_Brother_. 

He lets the word spiral around his head a little longer than needed. He needs it to sink in, to bring back the purpose. Sometimes, he almost thinks it's a word he still doesn't understand. Because how can he understand something that doesn't have a meaning? It's just blank. Blank letters. 

The garage is lit up with sparks of LED lights and neon tubes that are dangling from the crooked ceiling. But they don’t seem to be bright enough, and Hiro can feel the night seeping through the cracks and creases of the walls, shadows squeezing themselves into the crammed space. He doesn’t know how late it is. They’ve been pulling all-nighters. Hiro hadn’t been capable of saying no to his brother. Tadashi, with his enthusiastic grin and his kaleidoscopic eyes, all hopeful and eager like a child. Of course Hiro would never be capable of denying him of anything - even if it means standing in the same room as him and trying hard not to forget to breathe. Hiro hasn’t seen his brother smile like that in far too long. And maybe it takes him off guard, the way that smile lets a million firecrackers burst inside of his chest. And maybe Hiro pushes those feelings away and blames it on the lack of sleep; because maybe those firecrackers remind him of turbulent oceans and blazing wildfires and slender fingers searing through every layer of his skin. 

Maybe.

"You sure you don’t want to?" Hiro asks, eyes locked onto the chip resting in his palm. 

"You do it," Tadashi answers, and it sounds too reassuring, too thick to be real. Hiro doesn’t think his chest would be capable of dealing with gentle smiles and affectionate eyes. He’s just learned how to breathe again. 

Hiro nods. He’s been doing that a lot lately. It feels a little weird, as if he’s gotten far too used to shaking his head. 

Baymax is standing in the middle of the garage, unusually lifeless. It had been hard deactivating the bot for more than three days. It’s a little too quiet around the house, too calm. But now Hiro’s almost afraid of activating him. If the bot activates, the chip will have worked - and Hiro doesn’t want that. 

Because it would all go back to normal after this. Everything. If Baymax waves his hand, it means that Tadashi and Hiro are compatible again, functioning, dynamic. Brothers.  

"Hiro, you okay?" 

Tadashi’s voice is so soft, and it sounds exactly the way it should sound: A big brother concerned for his younger sibling. It makes Hiro want to scream. 

_No. No. No. I don’t know. Do I want it to be okay? Is this okay? Am I okay with this being okay? Am I? No? Fuck. Yes? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!_

Hiro says, "All good." and slides the chip into the open slot, trembling fingers, stuttering lungs. It’s silent in the garage, nothing but shallow blips of breaths squeezing themselves into the confined space. 

The bot whirs to life. His left arm bubbles upward, hand waving from left to right. 

"Hello, I am Baymax." 

Hiro’s chest collapses. 

"Yes!" Tadashi shouts, and he starts laughing. It’s manic and infectious. Hiro doesn’t feel like laughing. He’s caving in on himself as he watches his brother prance around like a hyperactive five-year-old. He’s glowing, literally buzzing with bright excitement. He looks like a fireworks display, the way he starts to light up the whole entire garage with nothing but his laughter. 

"Yes! Yes!" Tadashi thrusts a fist into the air, and he’s charging towards Baymax and jumping into those squishy marshmallow arms. He kisses the bot’s forehead. He laughs. It’s painful. There’s a hole in Hiro’s chest, and the only thing he can think of is: _Get the fuck out of here! Get out! Get out!_  

Maybe he’s a coward for averting his eyes and turning around. His feet are steering towards the door. 

_Coward._

"Knucklehead!" Tadashi says - and that’s all it takes for everything to be flung into fast forward. 

Fingers around his wrists. Feet stumbling backwards. Warm bodies colliding. 

Hiro is trapped in Tadashi’s arms. It’s a hug, big and warm and safe. His brother is still laughing. Hiro can feel it, those manic trills vibrating against his front. Hearing Tadashi laugh is bad, seeing Tadashi laugh is painful, but feeling it - really feeling it against his own skin - is wrenching his world apart. 

Images start infiltrating Hiro’s headspace, bad memories of drowning in foreign skin and terrible things slipping between slick tongues. 

Heat. Asphyxiation. 

_Not now. Please, not now, not when you’ve gotten so good at being good._

But then Tadashi stops laughing, and his arms are tightening around him like he’s trying to deflate his lungs. Hiro can’t take it. He can’t have this - this familiar conflict bawling inside of his skin. 

_Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No._

He’s caught between wanting to run away and wanting to stay, right there in between the arms that have only ever pushed him away the past few weeks. Tadashi’s hand is wandering up his spine, fingers brushing over the back of his neck and digging their nails into his scalp. It doesn’t feel innocent or naive, not one bit. He’s forcing Hiro closer, slender fingers pressing his forehead against the crook of his neck. Hiro can hear everything, every little thud of his heartbeat, every single breath rushing through his throat. He’s warm. He’s so warm, this taut plane of flesh molding itself around him like a web. 

"Hiro…"

_Yes. Yes, I want to stay._

Hiro bites his tongue so hard he draws blood. He rips his way out of the tight embrace. He’s panicking. He’s fucking panicking. The world is hazy, colors melting into each other like he’s caught in a spectrum. He’s dizzy. His feet are stumbling. He’s running out the door and up the stairs. He falls. He hits the floor. He gets back up and tries again. The house is dark, the silence filled with heaving breaths and heavy thuds and _panic, panic, panic._ He's steering towards aunt Cass' room. He doesn't know why. He feels like she'd be there to pull him out of the undertow. But her room is pitch black, and the sheets are tidy, and Hiro wants to scream because she's not home. She's not there to help. She's gone, and Hiro's so afraid. He feels like a child. He keeps running, stumbling, slamming against everything in his way. He's upstairs. He doesn't know how he got there. His back is pressed against the attic door, but his knees are weak, and his head is a chaotic jumble; he can barely keep himself on his feet. A body hurls itself against the other side of the door, and Hiro tumbles forward, palms clattering against the attic floor. He shuffles, arms forcing himself back onto his feet, but his weight is shifting too fast, and the foreign pressure on his shoulder is forcing him to turn. Hiro topples over, his brother falling with him. They hit the floor in a chaos of bashing limbs. Tadashi is looming over him, palms nailing his shoulders to the boards. His eyes have never looked so wild, and Hiro swears he can see his thoughts roaring behind those kaleidoscopes like feral animals.

The panic is twisting and shifting, the jackhammer in his chest becoming savage. Red. Everything is red. 

"Hiro, please - I -" 

Hiro downright growls, and it sounds brutal. He’s trying to escape, limbs wriggling themselves out of Tadashi’s iron grip. He succeeds, and for a split second he crawls away on his hands and knees, skin gritting against the hard wood. But Tadashi grabs his ankles and forces him back. Hiro barely manages to keep his chin from slamming onto the floor. His head is droning. It’s kicking and screaming. 

"Let me go, you fucking asshole! Stop! Just - _Stop_!" Hiro shouts, his hairline tingling at the sensation of bawling and cursing and flinging all his anger at somebody who doesn’t deserve it. He kicks, and his heel pounds against Tadashi’s chest. He hadn’t meant to kick him. He doesn’t intend to kick him again, but his brother looks barbaric, and it scares him, and he needs to run, and so he kicks him again. It’s harder this time, impact slicing its way up his leg and splitting his muscles apart. Tadashi lets him go. Hiro stumbles onto his feet, hands clawing at scattered comic books and lonesome sneakers. It’s like he’s trying to hold on for dear life, feet dangling at the cruelest angle. 

1000 feet drop. 

A large body collides into his spine. The punch hits his muscles like voltage sparking through electric wires. Hiro cries out, and he thrusts his fists into the body above him. He’s lost in a fever pitch. He’s completely disappeared, and all that’s left is this unfamiliar life form fueled by nothing but rage and panic and so much hate. 

Tadashi doesn’t retaliate. He’s letting Hiro hit him and kick him and hurt him so much. But he’s holding Hiro tight, and he’s not letting him go. Hiro needs him to let go. 

"Let me go! Let me go! Fucking - _Let me go_!"

Hiro sounds like a raging child trying to defend itself from someone so much larger and so much smarter. He’s being stupid. He’s always so stupid because the next thing he knows he’s shoving his knee upward, the bone cap slamming against taught muscles. Tadashi yells out in pain as curses fight their way out of clenched teeth. His brother’s eyes are ripped open, inches away, blaring, bawling, so fucking loud. Hiro can hear everything, every little thought clawing at those corneas. Tadashi rolls to the side, a hand pressed against his abdomen, face a plane of ruddy splurges. He flinches when Hiro forces him onto his back, the heel of his palms jammed against his brother’s chest. Hiro’s strong enough to keep him there, but not strong enough to keep him from turning the tables. 

"Are you done?" Tadashi chokes out, words cut off by gurgles and coughs. It sounds like he’s drowning. 

"No! No, you fucking - Stop messing with me! Stop messing with my head! It hurts. It hurts!" Hiro’s voice is nothing but a hoarse shriek. Tadashi swallows, his limbs going rigid. Hiro’s chest is pounding, throbbing like a giant vein. 

"Hurts," Hiro repeats, and the whispered word crumbles the second it leaves his lips. Tadashi surges forward, ripping Hiro’s hands from his chest with a grunt. He shoves him back, and Hiro’s spine hits the floor, wood grinding against his skull. The world starts moving like a colossal sea saw. His brother is above him, pinning him against the floor, eyes a kaleidoscope of fury. 

"You think I don’t know? You think I don’t know how much this hurts? You think I’m okay with feeling like this?" he shouts so loud Hiro can feel the words screwing themselves into both sides of his skull and clashing against each other in the middle. He tries to scramble away, but Tadashi has his fingers tightly curled into his sides, the force almost crushing his ribs.

"I can’t be in the same room as my own brother without wanting to tear everything apart! I see you with other people, and all I can think of is how much I want to bash their faces in!" he coughs out between breaths. Hiro can feel them, each wave of air hitting his features and washing away the cold. "Sometimes I feel like - like I could love you - like this, and then I think about keeping you with me, and I can’t - because the thought of touching you makes me want to -" Tadashi stops, swallows, and Hiro watches as his Adam’s Apple bobs between the tandems in his neck. His eyelids twitch, the intensity in his stare stuttering. 

"This is not me! I - I can’t think straight anymore. I feel like exploding every five seconds. I’m trying to make it okay again. I’ve been trying! But nothing I do works. Nothing! And you make me so angry because I don’t know who I’m turning into, and I don’t like that person. He scares me. This scares me. And it hurts! I know how much this hurts!"  

Tadashi is staring down at him. His eyes are deafening, a million voices screaming at once. 

_I know how much this hurts._

Hiro takes a gulp of breath before he’s flung into the depths, blood rushing like ocean tides.

Hands curled around his skull. Chest against chest. Hearts thundering. Lips against his. Wave after wave.  

Tadashi is kissing him like it’s hunger, like he can’t hold back. And Hiro doesn’t want him to. This is a mistake, but they’re making it, and it doesn’t feel like a mistake anymore. It just feels bad, really, really bad.

Tadashi digs his fingers into the spaces between Hiro’s ribs, pressure so strong it makes him swallow a groan. Hiro tangles his hands into his brother’s hair. He’s flexing his fingers, forcefully wrapping those strands around his knuckles. He yanks Tadashi closer, teeth clanking, tongues skidding, mouths drowning in voltage. It’s hectic and rough like they’re running out of time, and they want to be everywhere at once but don’t know where to start. 

Hiro digs his heels into the indents at the base of Tadashi’s back. He presses down, the bones of their hips slamming against each other, impact bruising. His brother is rutting against him, and Hiro’s trying to scramble upward, eager in the way he needs to feel every single twitch of those hips. Each thrust is forcing Tadashi’s fingers to dig deeper. He’s holding on too tight. It’s too much at once. Hiro’s ribcage is going to crumble with the pressure those fingers are creating. But he keeps on rolling his hips upward, so desperate and needy and fucking pathetic. But he doesn’t care. He doesn’t have enough strength left to care. 

Hiro’s jacket is being shoved upward, and he can feel nails cutting through his flesh, roaming, thumbs sliding up the grooves of his stomach and digging holes. It hurts. The pain is lightning, 500 megajoules fighting their way through every single tissue beneath his skin. Heated thoughts are bawling at the back of his mind, filthy little things clawing their way down the knobs of his spine and pooling in places far, far below. It’s like his muscles and bones are simmering, melting into each other with each snap of their hips and every heartbeat in-between. 

Hiro’s eyes are screwed tight, and he doesn’t know if he keeps them closed out of pain or shame. It feels better without seeing him. He doesn’t want to see him. But he can feel him - the pressure of his skin, the sledgehammer beneath his chest. It’s all right there, not even a millimeter left to smother. They’re free falling into each other, descending further and further into each other’s skins.

_What are we doing? What the fuck are we doing? We don’t know how to do any of this._

Hiro rips his fingers out of Tadashi’s hair, and he lets them slip over the back of his neck and down the curves of his shoulder blades. He’s fisting the cardigan, itchy and warm between his fingers. Tadashi is panting into his mouth, groans so low they’re plucking at the strings of his muscles. He’s shivering along, vibrating with each dropping octave. But Hiro’s keeping his sounds trapped inside of his throat. He doesn’t want Tadashi to hear. He doesn’t want him to know what he’s doing to him.

Tadashi is yanking Hiro’s jacket upward like he’s angry at it, like he just needs it to evaporate. The zipper breaks. His brother downright snarls. He’s ripping at the material, pulling it up and off in such a frenzy Hiro can’t believe that this is his brother. Tadashi is calm - _collected_.He doesn’t rut into attic floors. He doesn’t rip zippers apart. He doesn’t snarl like a fucking animal. He doesn’t start fires on foreign flesh. Hiro doesn’t know this person, doesn’t know how to handle him. He’s a stranger. And Hiro has never felt so helpless, so exposed. He’s bare to the bone, body reduced to quivering lips and desperate fingers. Shit like this doesn’t happen to him. This is not him. 

And when his jacket is finally flung onto the floor, skin exposed to each tremble of the universe, all he can think is: _This is not the way it’s supposed to go._

Tadashi’s lips are tugging themselves away, and Hiro’s squirming to press them back against his. But before he lets out a whine, he can feel a moist heat pressing itself against his jaw. A slick tongue is sliding against the sharp bone. Hiro is squeezing his eyes so hard he can see static. He’s pressing his cheek against the floor, trying to dig his nose into the wood and hide - just hide. But fingers are snatching his chin. They’re keeping him right there as that hot tongue continues to scorch his skin. With a puff of air, he forces the sob back down into the pits of his stomach. 

_No sound. Don’t you fucking dare._

His brother’s fingers are callused in the way they’re ripping through his skin and cracking his bones. It’s like he’s trying to break him in half. Hiro hates it. He hates how perfect it is. 

His body is blaring, strings caught in this personalized mayhem. A hand is gripping his belt, fingers squeezing themselves into the space between his boxers and jeans. He wants to scream and loosen the strain that’s keeping his vocal cords knotted tight. But he keeps his mouth clamped shut, teeth digging themselves into his tongue until he can taste metal. 

A click. A snap. His pants are being tugged past his hips and all the way down to his ankles. Rough. Hiro is being dragged with it. The back of his skull crushes against the floor. His head is close to exploding. Everything is so close to exploding. Two more breaths, and they’ll watch the world burn to the ground.But those hands are keeping it all in place. It's those fingers. It's those goddamned fingers. They're holding the pieces together. 

Tadashi’s tongue is slick against his neck, teeth catching the strained flesh so hard it stings. Hiro’s hips stutter, the throbbing heat between his legs hitting slender fingers. He hisses at the brief sensation of friction, and his tongue finds its way back between his teeth. But the pain is not keeping him in control. It’s cranking up the voltage. His body is screaming. 

Tadashi reacts, his lips slipping across his collar bones, moist breath cutting burn marks into his skin. The fingers clamping his chin loosen their grip and migrate over his chest, thumb pressing against dips and creases. Hiro can’t catch his breath. He’s suffocating, lungs deflating in their very own inferno.

Tadashi is so angry. He’s biting into Hiro’s muscles, scratching him raw and open. He has his hand between them, palm grinding against Hiro’s throbbing heat. And Hiro can’t do anything but let his hips gyrate against those fingers, legs angled, feet digging into the floor boards. He’s using them as leverage, forcing them to push him further against his brother’s fingers and the friction they’re creating. It’s shameless. Hiro’s throbbing, fucking aching for it - for _him_. And he hates how much he wants this. He hates how far he’s willing to go to get what he wants. And he can’t take it anymore. His skin is wailing, crying out for more contact, more heat, more sweat - more violence. 

Hiro curls his fingers into his brother’s biceps, and he’s tugging him back up, ripping that mouth away from his skin and slamming it against his own. He can taste himself, salt and musk and desperation. His fingers grip the cardigan, trying their best to get it off, but everything is in the way - mouths, noses, clumsy limbs. Tadashi won’t let him go, won’t give him enough space. Hiro’s so close to imploding. He doesn’t have time for this, no time for stupid, stupid complications. He needs it all _off, off, off._

Tadashi scrambles out of his clothes between breaths; his knees slam against Hiro’s stomach; his teeth cut into his upper lip; his elbows manage to hit him in the jaw. But Hiro’s too far gone to do anything other than flinch and tug his brother back against him like an impatient little child. 

There’s a finger hooked into the waistband of his boxers, and all it takes is a hitch of a breath for it to be ripped down his legs. 

And then Tadashi’s arms are wrapped around Hiro’s shoulder blades, and Hiro’s legs are twisted around Tadashi’s hips, and they’re entangling themselves in this chaos of naked limbs and frenzied breaths. It’s like they’re tethered electric wires, broken and fizzing against each other’s fibers. 

He jerks out of his skin when he feels a hand wrap itself around his cock, fingers tugging at the heated flesh, already slick and aching. Hiro slams his head against the floor. 

_Bam. Bam. Bam._

He’s whimpering, hips quivering on their own accord. He doesn’t have enough control, can’t keep his body in order. 

Tadashi is relentless as he traps Hiro’s heat in a cage of fingers. There’s no finesse about it, no system, no patience. He’s squeezing too hard, jerking too fast, and it burns, and it’s driving Hiro fucking insane.

He can hear the slick snap as the pad of a finger presses against the spot right under the ridge, the spot that makes Hiro’s toes curl. He’s trying to breathe out of his nose. He can’t. He’s breathing out of his mouth, and it’s not fresh air; it’s Tadashi. Hiro is breathing him in like he’s trying to trap him inside of his lungs, but he keeps escaping him, so he’s gasping for more.

They’re dragging each other across the floor, skin gritting against the mess sprawled over the boards. Hiro’s clinging to his brother like he can’t let go. And it’s ridiculous, the way he’s holding onto him as he shuffles through the drawers of his bed side table. Picture frames clatter to the ground - lamp stands, books, the whole entire fucking universe. They’re a tornado tearing everything down in their wake. And Hiro feels like they’re tearing up everything inside as well, every little molecule, shit that won’t let itself be mended once it’s ripped and twisted and turned inside-out. 

Cold lube spread over fingers. Condoms scattered. 

Tadashi is moving his hips in time with each snap of his wrist, breaths becoming so irregular Hiro can’t keep up. Hiro’s fingers are tangled in sweaty streaks, legs twisted. He’s holding on. But then he can feel fingers pressing against places even farther below, and he knows where they’re heading, and his brain is close to bursting, and he’s losing his grip just as fast as he’d attained it. He’s letting Tadashi’s hair slip through his fingers, hands roaming the heated scalp. There’s a slicked finger pressed against his entrance, tip digging itself into him. Hiro’s fingers spasm towards his palms, hair strung tight like bows around his knuckles. Tadashi groans against his lips. He bites his tongue so hard he sees jagged rays of white. He feels the stretch, but he’s clenching. He’s too tense. There’s this electric strain keeping his whole entire body on the edge of an uproar. He wants to relax, but he can’t. He just can’t. Tadashi lowers his pace, fingers almost stroking him instead of simmering him in friction. He’s kissing him, and it’s so gentle Hiro can barely feel it, almost as if he’s been numbed to all things tender. Tadashi isn’t slamming his mouth against Hiro’s in slick fervor; he’s brushing along his skin, leading him on, pulling him further and further like he’s trying to coax Hiro’s breaths out of his lungs and pull them into his own. It’s probably so much worse than bruising mouths. This feels far too close for comfort. Hiro shouldn’t like it. 

His breathing is toning down, tides rolling back in a languid pace. He’s opening up as those fingers work their way into his heat. He’s stretching around knuckle after knuckle. It burns - but Hiro can’t feel it. 

Tadashi’s hand is letting go of him, his own heat taking its place. Hiro can feel every ridge, every vein sliding against his own. It’s creating this friction that makes him want to slam fists into the floor. Tadashi is pressing his fingers against Hiro’s chin, wet marks sticking to his skin. There’s a thumb gliding along the flush of Hiro’s bottom lip, the nail catching the flesh and pulling it down. Just a fraction, just enough for Hiro to react with clamping his lips between his teeth. But Tadashi won’t have any of that, all dark and angry, with his calloused fingers and his hurricane eyes. And just like that the composure from before is shoved aside, and Hiro’s survival instincts are kicking in.

His brother is forcing that thumb between his lips, prying open his clenched teeth. Hiro grunts when his tongue tastes the salty tang of skin. Tadashi is hooking the tip of his thumb into his mouth like a crowbar, holding it open to give way to every little breath and every little sound. The fingers inside of him jerk forward so fast Hiro’s head inches back. He whines. Tadashi is sliding his fingers in and out, tempo synchronizing with their rapid breaths. Hiro opens his eyes. His brother is looming over him, face so close all he can see are two holes etched into a blurred plane of skin. Tadashi lets out this low groan, feral, inhumane, and those fingers hit that spot, that exact spot that makes Hiro -

_"Nnngh_ …Hah!"

He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the way he sounds, like he’s crumbling, one breath away from breaking down. Tadashi’s face is leaning in closer, fingers twisting inside of him, forehead pressed against his. Hiro’s tongue is lapping at the thumb that he has caught between his teeth. With each lewd sound that drips from his lips, Tadashi forces his mouth open just a little wider. And Hiro can’t keep his hips in check. They’re lifting themselves off of the wooden floor, squirming against those fingers that are making his walls quiver and clench. He’s huffing, fingernails scratching across skin and wood, a desperate attempt at keeping his head above water. 

Tadashi’s breaths hit his features in sputters, hot air carrying raw things he’ll never get to hear. He pulls his fingers out. Hiro sobs. He doesn’t like it. He clutches at the back of Tadashi’s neck, dragging him closer, so desperate for contact. But his brother is pulling away, and Hiro’s sobs are getting louder. Never has he felt so utterly, thoroughly done. He just needs Tadashi to fuck him against the floor boards until his back is burning and his head is droning. 

Plastic tearing. Feral grunts. 

Tadashi is pressing into him. Hiro squeezes his eyes shut. It’s slow but not slow enough, and Hiro can feel tears burning behind his sockets. He doesn’t have enough time to adjust, not enough time to swallow the groans back down into his throat. Tadashi bottoms out with a groan. Hiro pinches his eyes closed. He slams a fist into the floorboards, so hard the ache pricks his skin like a million needles. Skin against skin. Walls warm. Breaths slick. 

"Look - at me."

Hiro shakes his head.

"Hiro, please." His brother’s words are far too delicate for Hiro to understand. They’re too quiet, and Hiro’s afraid he imagined them, breathy letters ghosting inside of his cranium. "Look at me."

Hiro opens his eyes. 

It’s quiet. No voices in skull. No static in his ears. It’s just this heavy silence that’s leaking into his lungs like liquid, something that he can taste on his tongue. Salt and chaos. It’s too much to blare, to scream, to struggle. Mute.

This is not a stranger. He is not foreign or new. He is familiar. He is the same. Hiro wonders if Tadashi sees the resemblance, if he can see himself in the face mere inches away. Hiro wonders if Tadashi sees the same flush bleeding into the same pale hue of skin; he wonders if he realizes that the hair twisted around his knuckles catches the light like ocean tides; and he wonders if the eyes he’s staring into are just as turbulent as his own - loud, violent, deeper than any undertow. This is his brother. Tadashi. He’s kind and gentle, and when he’s angry he can be crueler than any natural disaster. And Hiro realizes that there’s so much more to this person than he had ever wanted to understand. His brother is everything at once - the whole entire universe bundled inside a kid with a stupid baseball cap and a smile brighter than every Supernova combined. He hates him - God, he hates him - but he loves him too. He loves him so much. 

His brother is staring down at him, and it’s the kind of stare that makes it feel like he’s caught him, like he’s got him wrapped around his fingers. 

Tadashi shifts, tiny jolts of friction causing Hiro’s breaths to sputter through his throat. They taste different. Tadashi’s face is wiped clean. He looks so honest that Hiro’s almost afraid of keeping his eyes open. It’s strange being the center of someone’s attention - _his_ attention. Hiro’s eyes wander across the expanse of pale skin spread over his own. Tadashi is this taut plane above him, muscles caught in a tension that makes him look solid, far too real to be part of this haze that he's lost himself in. His hands ghost across the cut of his brother’s cheekbones and down to the ridges of his abdomen. He notices the way Tadashi’s eyelids flutter if he puts enough pressure on the spot where his ribcages meet, the tiny indent between the bones. And Hiro likes the feel of it, this tense smoothness that he can grip into - and he doesn’t want to pry his fingers out of his flesh, doesn’t want to lose the contact. 

And then they’re falling and falling, thrust after thrust, and Hiro feels like the whiplash is punching every last breath out of his lungs. They’re helpless, limbs tangled into each other like they’re afraid of being ripped apart. Hiro’s fingers are curled into his brother’s skin, and he knows it hurts, but then Tadashi fucks him up against the bed frame, and he couldn’t care less. His brain is burning. His heart is loud. The world is crumbling and putting itself back together. And it happens again, and again, and again. His brother is the only thing that has ever existed. Only for a few moments. But that’s enough - more than enough. 

And then Hiro rolls his hips upward, thrust meeting thrust, rapid collisions. Bedroom hymns. Rhythms too fast for them to keep up. Hiro is babbling incoherent things into the atmosphere. 

_Harder. Harder. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

He's clutching, pounding, wheezing, falling. 

And then it hits him like an electric sucker-punch, dynamite between his hipbones. It’s voltage and desperation and everything terrible in-between. Tadashi is biting into his shoulder. Hiro is holding on for dear life.

His brother is trembling. It’s like he’s vibrating, like there’s this static molded around him. Hiro grips Tadashi’s jaw between his hands, and he clamps his head between his fingers, creating enough tension to feed the static. His brother is only inches away, heavy-lidded, mouth swollen, cheeks burning - and Hiro wants all of it. He wants Tadashi. 

✖︎

There are those dreams that jerk your bones with a sense of vertigo. You’re falling down a cliff, hands and feet helpless as they grab nothing but air. You tremble and shake, and your spine hurls towards the ceiling, eyes open, chest heaving. It was just a dream. It wasn’t real. 

But Hiro doesn’t know if the dream is over. It still feels like he’s falling. He doesn’t know when he’ll slam into the ground. 

He turns, pulling the sheets a little tighter around his limbs. Everything’s warm. Tadashi is warm. 

He can still feel the remnants of the night tapered to his skin. It’s weird creating memories when the memories still feel like now, when they still feel like they’re happening. Heated whispers stuck to his eardrums. Skin covered in dried sweat and violent kisses. His heart is still burning. He isn’t really sure if it will ever stop burning. Afterglows shouldn’t be this terrifying. 

His brother is not even an inch away, face dug into the pillow. It’s the first time Hiro can see him, really see him - no tension, no distortion. He looks so at ease like he’s drifting through a dimension where worry is nonexistent. Hiro likes his brother’s face like this the most. He hasn’t seen him sleep in far too long. Tadashi is always so eager, far too alive to spend his time in beds. He’s the kind of person who should see sleep as an afterthought.

Hiro inches closer, just enough to feel his brother’s breath prick his skin. He looks so young. Breakable.

Without a giant grin devouring his face, his mouth looks so small, delicate like it was painted on. There’s this flush melting into his pale complexion, bruise-like stains spread over his high cheekbones and the tip of his thick-rooted nose. His eyelids flutter, quick like wings. Hiro watches the way his long lashes sweep across his skin. He watches as those eyes open. He watches as they adjust, wary and comatose as they let the world seep in. 

And Hiro likes those eyes hidden beneath the shadows of their lids. There’s not enough light for kaleidoscopes. It’s too dark, too deep. Perfect for pleasant tides.

Two oceans in their 5 A.M. undercurrents. 

Tadashi jerks forward, one large hand curled into Hiro’s bicep, so tight Hiro flinches like he’s being burned. It’s another bruise on his battered skin. He is a collection of lovely discolorations. 

But his brother isn’t reacting. He isn’t even blinking. He’s just staring at Hiro; it’s desperation and something that looks scary. 

"I’m staying," Hiro breathes. He doesn’t know why he says it. It makes no sense the second it slips out between his lips, but Tadashi’s features soften a fraction, and his fingers pry themselves out of his skin, and maybe somehow his words had made sense. A breath quivers out of Tadashi’s lungs, and Hiro doesn’t have enough time to react to his sudden movements. His brother’s face is buried into his chest, nose digging into the worn out material of his T-Shirt. The world smells like lemon shampoo and sweat and that musk pressed into pillow cases. He’s wrapping those big arms around Hiro, tugging him closer and squeezing him so tight he’s gasping for air. It’s so honest that Hiro can’t do anything other than fold his arms around those broad shoulders and hope his wiry limbs are capable of conveying as much reassurance as he needs them to. He can reach all around his brother, and it makes Tadashi look even more vulnerable like he’s shrinking against Hiro’s chest, curling up into his own skin. Hiro has never held his brother like this. He’s never been the one holding. He has only ever been the one to grasp and clutch and quiver. And as Hiro digs his nose into the soft strands of Tadashi’s scalp, he wonders how fast the world turns when you aren’t paying any attention. It feels like they’re two little specks on an atlas globe, and someone won’t let it stop spinning. Round and round. 

They stay like that until the sun migrates towards floor and the rays leak onto the sheets. Hiro loosens his grip around Tadashi’s shoulder blade, and he dips his fingers into the slice of light, his skin igniting. Stray particles of dust are dancing along the column, their movements gentle like they’re drifting through the atmosphere without a care in the world. He wonders what that must feel like, to just drift not drown. 

"What now?" Hiro breathes into the top of Tadashi’s head. He doesn’t know if his brother had heard the question. He doesn’t even know if he himself had heard the question. But the words are there now, letters morphing into this gigantic question mark that’s etching itself into their future. And Hiro has never bothered thinking too much about what was to come; what he would do, who he would love, who he would be. He’d always thought he was too young to think about the future, too fragile to let the real world see him. But he’s not too young. Being young isn’t good enough of an excuse. Because he’s 17 years old, and life is hitting him like a fucking freight train, 75 MPH colliding into his chest. It’s all happening too fast for him to react. He’s out there now, bare to the bone, visible for the whole entire world to see. He feels like an antelope running through a shallow plane, and there are too many dangers lurking in the atmosphere to stop and take a breather. And he knows this feeling, being afraid of everything he can’t see. The unknown. He remembers holding Tadashi’s hand in front of two holes in the ground, coffins so polished he could see his own reflection staring back at him. And he remembers how small he’d been, the top of his messy head barely reaching his brother’s elbows. They’re almost the same height now. Sometimes, Hiro thinks he’ll be taller. Sometimes. 

"I don’t know," Tadashi mumbles into Hiro’s chest. His brother is nibbling at his T-Shirt. "Is it supposed to feel like this?" He tightens his grip. He keeps nibbling. 

_Like the tectonic plates are shifting at light speed and we’re being hurled across continent after continent trying our best to keep our fingers linked_. 

"I don’t know," Hiro answers. And just when he had thought the questions were over, he’s being flung into an ocean full of them. He wonders how long it will take until they’ve found a fraction of the answers to those millions and millions of questions. He’s desperate for the solutions - the way he always is. The answers that he’s creating in his head aren’t what he wants them to be. They’re cruel. He doesn’t want them to be so cruel.

"I keep having these dreams…They take you away from me. They take you away because they find out." Tadashi stops nibbling. He squeezes his nose into Hiro’s ribcage. Hiro wants to say so many things. Everything. He wants to empty his lungs until his throat starts to spasm. But he feels like everything he needs to say has already been said, thought, shouted, whispered, ripped apart and knitted back together again. They know. For fuck’s sake, they know. They’re creating this giant glitch in the cosmos, messing up the system, fracturing it with their stupid, stupid hearts.  

They should be normal brothers, living normal lives, loving normal people. David is normal. Enzo is normal. There must be something wrong with Hiro. There's a defect in his head, a damaged particle stuck between the creases. Because he doesn't want anything _normal_. He wants horrible things, scary things, things normal people shouldn't want. 

Hiro has no idea how not-normal things are supposed to work. They’re going to end up with shattered chests and broken brains. And it’s already starting, this strange adjustment between them. It’s like they’re growing apart and growing back together in ways that are far too strange for them to understand. 

_Change_. 

"I’m staying," Hiro says. He doesn’t know why he says it again, but it feels like he could say it another time and another - until it’d be the only thing he would ever want to say. 

_I’m staying._

"Why?"

"Where else would I go? I'm staying."

"Even like this?"

"Even like this."

"Even like this...This scares me."

"I’m sorry."

"You shouldn't be apologizing."

"I feel like apologizing."

"You hate apologizing."

"I'm sorry."

"I love you."Tadashi presses the words into Hiro’s chest. They sound like gibberish. They feel like a promise. 

_I love you too._

Tadashi shifts in his arms, and before Hiro is ready, his brother is peeking up at him through thick lashes and chaotic hair. He’s not smiling, not really, but there’s this slight crookedness to his lips, this tiny spark that makes Hiro’s heart stutter. And the way he’s looking at him hurls him back in time, brain skipping through memory after memory. 

_Family night. Finding Nemo_. 

Tadashi has his arms wrapped around Hiro, and he’s not looking at the screen, he’s staring down at his little brother. 

Big eyes. Crooked lips. 

And Hiro doesn’t dare look anywhere else. He’s looking at his brother, watching as he leans in closer. Tadashi doesn’t mouth the next line. He never does. He just grips Hiro a little tighter and looks at him a little harder, and Dory says "I look at you, and I’m home.", and it’s sticky and stupid, and Hiro wants to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t. 

Some things don't change. Some things stay. The thought makes Hiro smile. Because whatever kind of love this is, it’s theirs. It’s a terrible thing, constantly evolving, twisting and shifting in-between breaths. 

But it’s home. And as long as Hiro is home, he won't be afraid of letting the world see him. He won't be afraid of taking the punches. He won't be afraid of loving the person he wants to love - the person he needs to love. 

 

✖︎    FIN    ✖︎

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a "the end is the start" kind of ending...thingamajiggy...mabob...my brain...*screams*  
> What have I done. This got so weird. SO WEIRD. Honestly, I wish I could give these two rainbow sex and sappy 90's love songs. Hope you don't hate me too much. I love you though! You are fantabulous! Have a fantabulous day :)


End file.
